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1 THE LIBRARY «F 
CONGRESS, 


Two Copies 


Received 


APR 3 


1903 


, Copyright 
CUSS U/ 


Entry 
XXe.No. 


COPY 


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Copyright by 

EATON & MAINS 

1903 



EXPLANATORY NOTE. 



Christianity, defined in terms of conduct, is that 
course of action which accords with the requirements 
of Christ ; defined in terms of life, it is that vital expe- 
rience which comes from contact of the Spirit of 
Christ with the human soul ; defined in terms of doc- 
trine, it is the teaching of Jesus and his apostles ; de- 
fined in its more general historic aspect, it is that 
unique development which, commencin with Christ 
himself, has extended through the Christian centuries; 
but defined specifically and distinctively, it is that series 
of events belonging to the earthly career of Jesus 
Christ which began with the Advent and closed with 
the Ascension. 

These two events of his peculiar advent and of his 
peculiar ascension, if duly proved, carry with them a 
peculiar intervening life in harmony with the events 
themselves. 

In this little volume it is proposed to discuss certain 
questions, first of all, concerning the advent and then 
certain other questions concerning the resurrection and 
ascension of Jesus Christ — these latter considered as 
the two parts of a single event. 

In the first chapter, on "Preliminary Questions," the 
discussion turns on the possibility and probability of 



4 Explanatory Note. 

an advent. This is followed, in the second chapter, by- 
inquiries as to the ability of the New Testament writers 
rightly to apprehend and to report our Lord in his 
unique career and his especial teachings; their credi- 
bility as witnesses to certain alleged facts. Then comes 
a third chapter, devoted to a critical examination of 
the contents of their testimony to the advent. 

The same order of inquiry is preserved in discussing 
the termination of the earthly career of our Lord. In 
the fourth chapter the probability of such a resurrec- 
tion and ascension are considered. In the fifth chapter 
the witnesses and their means of knowing the facts to 
which they testify are passed in review. In the sixth 
chapter the testimony they give is carefully examined. 
And the two related facts, of such a beginning and 
such an ending of the earthly life of Jesus, are shown 
to carry with them the conviction to careful students 
that some such intermediate life was lived as that 
claimed by the New Testament writers. 

If we can ascertain "how Jesus came and how he 
left us," then new emphasis is given to further ques- 
tions concerning "who he was" and "what he did when 
he was with us." Then the birth, the life, the death, 
the resurrection will each demand the other, and to- 
gether will make up the completed whole. 

If the perusal of this little book shall be as helpful 
to the reader as its preparation has been to the author 
he will be abundantly rewarded for his study of the 
subject discussed. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

Preliminary Questions. 

i. Has there been a widespread feeling of the need of an 
incarnation? page 10. The revelation of God through the 
things he had made and the words he had spoken, not 
enough, n. Call for the supernatural, 12. And the super- 
natural, properly proved, our guide in this doctrine, 13. Re- 
view of philosophic thought, 14. Eastern thought; in Bud- 
dhism ; in Greece and Rome, 14. In a real Incarnation, dimly 
hinted elsewhere, but everywhere needed, all would culmi- 
nate, 15. 

2. Would such an event fitly introduce a career meeting 
alike divine and human wants? 15. God may need it in self- 
vindication, and man need it in order to act broadly and right- 
ly, 16. How else, in such a world as this, decide whether God 
is love or hate? 18. Some such overpowering manifestation 
needed as would settle the question, 19. Browning's words 
about the Incarnation as solving all difficulty, 20. 

3. Is any other way of advent more probable than that de- 
scribed in the New Testament? 21. The Coming One must 
come into the race by the way of a human birth, 22. Human 
nature not originally and necessarily sinful, 23 ; must come 
in a Hebrew line ; in a nation giving honor to virgin life ; must 
be of regal descent, and yet live among common people, 23. 

4. What should one so born be expected to be and to do? 
He must be human, 24. But he must be more than a man's 
highest measure of God, 25. Instead of "limitation by hu- 
manity," extension as far as humanity, 26. Not only subjec- 
tive feeling, but objective manifestation of God in an Incarna- 
tion, is needed, 26. Must be a person through whom God can 
be restored to man, and man to God, 26. 

5. Can we think of any better method of furnishing to the 
zvorld the proof of such an event than that proposed by the 
New Testament? 27. The method of the time demanded that 
disciples should repeat the words and deeds of a Master, 27* 



6 Contents. 

"Oral Gospels," 28. The earliest Epistles were to be the 
earliest documentary proof. By Epistles, the divine idea of 
Incarnation was to be expressed, 29; the subsequent Gospels 
were to give the needed details, 30. Such a method of present- 
ing the evidence commends itself when understood, 32. 



CHAPTER II. 
The Witnesses to the Incarnation. 

1. God has given us a progressive revelation — he had spoken 
before Jesus came; at periods of emergency; in sacred rites; 
by prophetic men, 34. Hebrew prophecy grounded in Hebrew 
history, 36. Glances beyond immediate events, to the Coming 
One, 37. The word "witness," so often used, 37. The his- 
torical fact was to be historically proved. Intellectual and 
moral proof as good in its sphere as mathematical proof, 38. 
The "testimony of God" comes to us in the form of litera- 
ture — the most satisfactory and enduring form, 39. Natural 
human faculties strengthened and inspired, 39. Sketches, both 
"ideal" and "minutely actual," in describing the coming 
Christ, 41. Promises of him steadily developed — all of them 
not about some one thrust in upon men, but of one "to be 
born," 42. An immense preparatory "gospel of the nativ- 
ity," 43- 

2. The testimony of Jesus to himself : claimed that he was 
the prophetic Christ, 45. Declared that the prophecies, in 
minute and definite things, were "concerning himself," 46. 

3. Testimony of disciples : mission of the Twelve, 47. But 
a Paul was needed to set forth in documents the comprehen- 
sive idea, 49. "Back to Christ." Paul's earlier Epistles older 
documents than the Gospels. Gospels fill in details of the idea 
given in Epistles, 50. Deity through humanity. Christ as 
"Jehovah," 51. "God over all." After conversion through 
the divine idea, converts would inquire about details, such as 
Christ's birth, 54. Paul's crucial declaration, 55. Peter's 
point of view, 55. That of John, 55. James, in his peculiar 
view, 58. The Epistles taken as a whole, 59. The personal 
Christ and the official Christ, 60. The relation of Christ to 
God described in governmental terms; in forensic terms; in 
filial terms; in terms of vitality, 64. Evangelists give us 
sketches rather than biographies. These have a peculiarly 
self-evidencing power, 64. Why the detail of the virgin birth 
in two Gospels, and in these two only, 65. The chapters of 
Matthew and Luke cannot be subsequent additions, 66. Pe- 
culiar confirmations of them, 67. Each evangelist his own 
purpose, and so his own point of view, 69. The consent of 



Contents. 7 

the others, 70. Matthew writes for the Jew; Luke for the 
Gentile, 72. In the Gospels the doctrinal is combined with the 
historical idea of the Incarnation, 72. Historical facts reflected 
in the spiritual experience, 74. Writers of Gospels are He- 
brews ; they were writers in a skeptical age, 80. Ethical duty- 
founded by them on the Incarnation, 84. 



CHAPTER III. 
The Testimony of the Witnesses. 

Definiteness of the records, 88. Genealogical tables, 93. 
W T hy inserted only in Matthew and Luke, 94. Difference be- 
tween lineal and royal descent; but both coincide at last, 95. 
Luke so near Holy Family as to hear and record their 
words, 96. No need of inventing such a story, 96. Tracing a 
royal descent impossible after destruction of Jerusalem, 98. 
Questions about date of enrollment and place of nativity, 101. 
Those, vital questions in early centuries and for Jewish con- 
verts, 102. Mark's assumption of the facts, 103. John inti- 
mates, but without definite description, the virgin birth, 106. 
Paul also through Luke, whose purity and delicacy are mani- 
fest in the story, no. Social, political, and personal circum- 
stances; Magi, shepherds, and Roman ruler; presentation in 
temple, 114. General impression made by the facts, 116. Spe- 
cial impression made (1) upon the virgin mother, 120; 
(2) upon the public of his day, 121; (3) upon his disci- 
ples, 122; (4) Christ's own consciousness, 123; (5) in subse- 
quent centuries by the records, 124. Divinity extended rather 
than limited by Incarnation, 131. Christ's full knowledge of 
all he needed to know at any stage of his official career, 132. 
Godet's summary of the evidence, 133. Recapitulation of argu- 
ment, 134. Christianity built on historic facts, 137. These 
not to be set aside by any theory of "the inexactness of human 
language," 141. Nor by any theory of "moral value-judg- 
ments," 142. The facts must be taken at their historic worth, 
144-148. 

CHAPTER IV. 

Questions About the Lord's Departure. 

How should we expect Jesus would end his career? 153. 
What should follow his death? 154. Completeness over against 
bodily death is bodily resurrection, 155. Possibility as to any 
resurrection of a human body, 155. The real essence alike of 
mind and body unknown, 158. Larger capacities than we now 
know, probable, 158. Constitutional basis for changing mani- 



8 Contents. 

festations in both, 159. Death of the visible sometimes the 
opportunity for invisible potencies, 159. Premonitions of 
resurrection in nature, 162. Argument for a possible or a 
probable resurrection is argument for a body capable of ascen- 
sion as well, 163. There is the great probability of a spiritual 
body with capacities for the spiritual man, 166. 

CHAPTER V. 

The Witnesses to the Lord's Resurrection and Ascension. 

The earliest writer to name on his pages these facts is 
Paul, 168. His means of knowledge, 168. His grasp of Chris- 
tianity as a whole, 170. He enumerates, incidentally, six of 
the appearances of Christ after his resurrection, 171-175. His 
own testimony as one who saw the risen Christ on the way to 
Damascus, 177. He argues from these manifestations the 
corporeity of Christ at the resurrection, 178. The testimony 
of others from whom the evangelists derived the inci- 
dents, 178. The continuous testimony of the writers of the 
New Testament not only to the resurrection but the ascension 
of Jesus, 179. The Christ of "The Revelation" is the risen, 
ascended, and reigning Christ, 180. 



CHAPTER VI. 

The Testimony of these Witnesses. 

The four evangelists. Matthew's incidents in keeping with 
his purpose, 183. Mark's incidents looking at the facts from 
another point of view, 185. Luke's specific purpose shown in 
the incidents he records, 187. John's testimony given with 
peculiar vividness, 189. Peter's testimony not only through 
Mark, but in his Epistles, 191. The contradictory theories and 
their failure, 193-197. The completed resurrection in the 
ascension, 198. Summary of the evidence for the resurrection : 
(1) Former miracles prepare for this, 199. (2) Gives him 
especial memory in the thought of the world, 200. (3) He 
promised it, 201. (4) Seen repeatedly by those who best knew 
him, 202. (5) Witnesses not credulous at outset, 205. (6) The 
multitude of the witnesses, 206. (7) Immediate article of 
faith in the churches, 207. (8) Gave rise to vital doctrine, 208. 
All these arguments for the ascension as the completion of the 
resurrection, 211. The whole career from advent to ascension 
compels a peculiar intervening life, 212-214. The coming 
Christ, 215. 



ADVENT AND ASCENSION. 



HOW JESUS CAME TO US. 



CHAPTER I. 

Preliminary Questions. 

Two gentlemen were conversing about that subject 
on which men will never cease to think and speak- — 
the supernatural. It was near to the Christmas cele- 
bration. One of them said to the other, "This whole 
matter of the supernatural is very fascinating ; but can 
we really know anything definite about it?" In reply 
his friend referred to what he called the leading fact 
of supernaturalism — the peculiar birth of Jesus Christ 
which so many were just about to celebrate. "But," 
said the first man, "there are immense difficulties in 
the way of the acceptance of the story of the birth of 
a human child who had no human father. The whole 
matter is so utterly unlike all we know of other human 
births as to be almost, if not altogether, incredible. 
I wish one could believe in Christianity without ac- 
cepting the virgin birth." To which there was the 
quick reply that if the Child then born was simply and 



io Advent and Ascension. 

only a human child there would be the gravest doubt. 
But if the one thus born was a demand alike of God's 
thought and of man's thought, of God's need and of 
man's need, then some such beginning of an earthly 
life would not only be credible, but the absence of it 
would be an incredible thing. "That may be so," said 
the other ; "and yet I find it hard to believe in what is 
called 'the Incarnation.' " "Will you," was the instant 
reply, "consider carefully five things which I will put 
down in the form of questions? And when you have 
thought them through we will talk again of these 
things. The five questions are these : 

"i. Has there been a widespread and conscious need 
of some such an incarnation of God in a person with a 
human body and mind and soul? 

"2. Would such an incarnation as that described in 
the Gospels fitly introduce a life that should meet cer- 
tain needs of God and of man; and, if so, what are 
those needs? 

"3. Is there any other more probable way for such 
a being to come to us than through some such a birth 
as that claimed in the New Testament? 

"4. Would such an incarnation, followed by such a 
life, make the whole matter of religion more distinct 
and impressive? 

"5. Can we think of any better way, all things con- 
sidered, for giving to the world satisfactory evidence 
of such an event than that furnished in the New Tes- 
tament?" 

Whether the other man consented to use this most 



How Jesus Came to Us. ii 

reasonable method of approaching the subject we need 
not ask; but we — writer and reader of these pages — 
may consider together not unprofitably these questions 
just named. For they are not forbidden. These in- 
quiries are not irreverent. As men endowed with 
reason we are required to employ our faculties on these 
noble themes. And this method of approach is not to 
be considered as an a priori argument — though a priori 
argument in all investigation is not without a certain 
worth; these questions are to be asked simply to 
open up the problem and to show what is involved in 
the idea of an incarnation. 

The word "incarnation" is used more especially of 
one event — the alleged virgin birth of our Lord. But 
that event is the initial one which gives its name also 
to a whole marvelous career. So that, while in this 
discussion we are to use the word mainly in its initial 
sense, there cannot but be a constant recurrence to the 
subsequent life which such a birth would forecast. 

i. Has there been a widespread conviction of the 
need of some such an incarnation? 

There has certainly been a widespread and inefface- 
able belief in the supernatural. This has not been con- 
fined to men in the lower civilizations ; foremost think- 
ers to-day form societies for psychical research. It is 
not the mark of high thinking to confine one's thought 
to the material world. Even science, which is defined 
to be "the study and classification of phenomena," is 
constantly overleaping its self-imposed bounds and 
striving to enter the domain of philosophy by asking 



12 Advent and Ascension. 

what there is — there is felt to be something — behind 
all phenomena. Pressed closely, nearly all scientists — 
how much more all philosophers — are getting to feel 
that the "something behind all phenomena" is a "Some 
One." The new drift is certainly in that direction. 
Mind is not content with things. It desires to know 
what is the thought that is over and above and in all 
things. The "something behind" is supernatural ; 
above nature. So thought the ancients, agreeing in 
this with the moderns. Egyptian thought had among 
those initiated into the priesthood many who held 
firmly to the supernatural, and its God was God 
alike of the natural and the supernatural. Greek and 
Roman thought pressed on over different paths to the 
same result. Hebrew thinking ran with greater depth 
and wider stream toward that same illimitable ocean of 
the supernatural. 

For want of some great fact that shall govern all 
men's ideas of the supernatural there have been many 
sad mistakes. As with the natural, so with the super- 
natural, there have been tens of thousands of wrong 
theories. Who, on account of all these errors, believes 
the less in the natural, and why should any wise man 
believe the less in the supernatural because of human 
mistakes about this matter? We call them errors in 
the realm of the natural, and superstitions in the realm 
of the supernatural. And only Omniscience can know 
whether those in the one realm exceed those in the 
other ; but no number of them can destroy the persist- 
ent belief in an external and natural world, and also in 



How Jesus Came to Us. 13 

an invisible and spiritual world. Now, if there can be 
assurance given to men by some one great fact in 
which the supernatural bursts through the natural in 
undoubted manifestation — some one great fact, like the 
Incarnation, which will show men the line along which 
the supernatural can be relieved on the one hand of the 
frivolous and on the other of the superstitious — and 
thus there can be a clear sanity in following that line, 
then the great demand will be perfectly met. 

Let it be conceded that "God is the normal object of 
the mind's belief;" still the universal craving is grati- 
fied only in part. It is felt that the God manifested in 
nature ought to be further manifested in man. From 
the shaping and the working of man's mind we can get 
some idea of the divine mind. But the two ideas, that 
of man's likeness to God in order of faculty and that 
of the incarnation of God in a being possessed of a 
human body and a human soul, are widely different. 
The latter has been often surrounded with terrible 
misconceptions, and yet men have held to it persistently 
notwithstanding all. Those attempts may have been 
"blind and halt and lame," but who would know of 
blindness if there were no vision, or of sickness if there 
were no health? There would be no superstition if 
there were not somewhere the true religion; and the 
multitude of mistaken ideas about an incarnation of 
God in the long reaches of human history show, not 
that everything is false, but that somewhere there is a 
truth in this direction. 

Reviewing the philosophic conceptions of the think- 



14 Advent and Ascension. 

ing world, Mr. S. Baring-Gould has insisted that "the 
belief in a Creator is" in all human thought "the first 
step that necessitates an incarnation." This was but 
the echo of the declaration of Plato, that God must 
come down from heaven in human form if men were 
to have certainty in religion. The concept of the more 
ancient faiths was that of a Restorer "who, while 
human, should also be more than human." In some 
loose sense one section of Eastern thought held that 
every man was an emanation — an idea which, though 
different, was in some ways akin to that of an incar- 
nation. Zoroaster, soon after Moses, "predicted a 
Saviour incarnate," and, in the later legend of Greece, 
Prometheus is to be delivered from his chains. In 
Brahmanism God did not always dwell on high. He 
came down in earthly form to live and suffer for men. 
In the "Mahabharata," a poem more ancient than 
Buddhism, there is a series of divine "descents," so 
called, somewhat similar to incarnations. The Deity 
says, "When religion is in danger I come forth." Only 
this is to be noted, that these hints in the Indian 
religions have in them no gain except in philosophic 
theory. There is no real incarnation. There is never 
actual fact, never real moral personality. At most 
there is merely theoretical resemblance. There is a 
distinct hint ; but practically the hint is neutralized by 
divergent beliefs. Always the idea was to free men 
not from sin, but from personal existence ; for life was 
considered a curse. The coming One was to give 
death, not life. These premonitions show the hold of 



How Jesus Came to Us. 15 

the idea of incarnation, even in its mistaken forms, on 
the race. 1 

Now, there is just one direction in which a thought- 
ful man can look to find a real incarnation. He will 
find it not in the Roman idea, in which man becomes 
a god — which is not an incarnation at all. He will 
find it only in God becoming man, as in Christianity. 
In such an incarnation as it presents all rightful expec- 
tations culminate. It is here or nowhere. It is this or 
nothing, thus far on in human history. If this can be 
certified there will be a clew to the kind of super- 
naturalism which alone is credible; a test by which 
superstition can be detected and the genuinely super- 
natural in religion be assured. The credible will be 
along this line. The supernatural, then, for us will 
have a basis. 

2. Would such an incarnation as that described in 
the Gospels be the fit introduction to a life that should 
meet especial needs of God and of man; and, if so, 
what needs? 

Let us say, with all reverence, that God may need 
it for his own manifestation. Revealed partially in the 
constitution of human souls and in their physical 
environment, these methods are liable to the mistake 
which belongs to any partial disclosure. So much 
known may need to have more made known by way 
of correction. Alike God's transcendence and his 

1 Stalker in his Life of Christ, after reciting some of the heathen 
stories of God-born men from mortal mothers, and after showing how 
repugnant all such ideas were to men trained, as were the apostles, in 
Jewish ideas, insists that these things were "indications of a deep-seated 
sense in our common humanity of the need of an incarnation." 



16 Advent and Ascension. 

immanence may need a manifestation peculiar in kind 
and full in expression. The material universe and even 
the largest of all human souls may fail here. God may 
need in self -justification to do more than to manifest 
himself. He may need to become incarnate himself. 
And if he, then how much more may we need such an 
incarnation ! He has revealed himself just enough to 
whet our appetite for more and peculiar revelation. 
We know just enough about him not only to wish to 
know more but to be in absolute need of knowing more. 
We are finite, yet with infinite cravings; sinful, yet 
with ideals of absolute perfection. If God may demand 
an incarnation in order not to be misunderstood, how 
much more may we in order not to misunderstand! 
There are things beyond which we need to know in or- 
der to do the right ; things above our ken that would so 
help us if God would by his incarnation reveal himself 
to us. Even our finiteness and sinfulness are pleas 
for his compassion. It seems to be so needful to have 
some things settled once for all, and so settled that 
never could one doubt be raised about them. And so 
far as we can see the only settlement of them would 
be by a divine incarnation. 

Take that truth of God as a God of love. How will 
you prove it? Can any man take all the facts for and 
against the proposition, and estimate them all properly, 
and then strike the balance and give the decision? 
He must needs be omniscient to do this. Some single 
fact not known to anyone save to God might change 
the verdict. Even when we take into the account the 



How Jesus Came to Us. fi? 

things we think we know, are we quite sure we fully 
know them? Inclined by what he sees to-day to 
decide that God is love, a man may be obliged to sus- 
pend or even reverse his judgment to-morrow. His 
own moods have much to do with his decision. His 
position, his climate, his surroundings, his associates, 
his studies, his business, his recreations, all affect his 
conclusion. He may propose to decide the question 
by what he knows of the aspects of nature about him, 
but skies frown, as well as smile; and if there is not 
some one great overwhelming fact in proof of the 
divine love, he can come to no decision. Shutting out 
anything like the idea of incarnation, where could 
one find this needed proof ? 

A man stands on St. Elmo. Before him is the finest 
bay in all the world, the Bay of Naples. Directly 
across from him is Vesuvius, its thin veil of smoke 
rising gracefully from its summit. Beautiful white 
villages cling to its sides. The sunset hour is near. 
The air is full of that wonderful golden mist seen 
nowhere else on earth, a mist that conceals nothing 
but glorifies all things above, beneath, around. There is 
the sough in the low trees of the soft wind that hardly 
disturbs a leaf. The view is one of surpassing loveli- 
ness. Once seen it is the memory of a lifetime. The 
tender benediction of Heaven seems to rest on all 
things that meet the eye, and the man says that surely 
the Maker of all this is benignant; surely "God is 
love." But let this man visit again the same spot. 
Scarce twenty-four hours have gone, but how changed 

2 



18 Advent and Ascension. 

is all! Instead of last night's glory, the heavens are 
ashen gray and are turning swiftly to blackness. The 
air is heavy with sulphurous vapors. The solid world 
reverberates with the thunder of the earthquake. That 
grand and beautiful Vesuvius of last night is sullen 
in its awful roar, and down its sides flow the streams 
of fiery lava. They reach those cities clinging yester- 
day so fondly to its sides. They sweep them out of 
existence in a moment ; and their fleeing inhabitants — 
men, women, and children — before they can gain a 
place of safety, notwithstanding all their cries to 
Heaven, are caught in that horrible flood and perish 
miserably in their wild despair. What shall this man 
say now? Is God love, or is he hate? 1 If last night 
this man, standing amid the glories of that Italian sun- 
set, was warranted in his conclusion that "God is love," 
what conclusion is he warranted in drawing to-night? 
Can he be blamed for his newer inference? 

It is not easy in a world like this, with its abounding 
contradictions, to draw the inference that love rules; 
or, if one draws it in hours of delight, what inference 
remains for him in his hours of anguish? Look out 
where you will. Populous cities ? Yes ; and crowded 
cemeteries where the dead outnumber the living. Calm 
summers? Yes; and fierce, wild storms rising on 
the ocean, gathering new fury with every mile they 
travel, and then pouring themselves on some doomed 
bark crowded toward toothed rocks hungry for their 

1 "It looks as if there were an almighty power working out some far- 
off end of its own with serene disregard of suffering, expenditure, and 
waste entailed in the process." — Maudsley. 



How Jesus Came to Us. 19 

prey, at midnight, and none to save. Who shall 
gather all the facts to see whether love predominates, 
or hate? When we have gathered all the facts 
we know, and all which the whole human race has 
accumulated, there may be some other sad fact which 
no man has yet discovered, but which if taken into 
the estimate would turn disastrously the scale. 1 Not 
in this way, not by nature alone, not by any sum- 
ming up of its facts or its laws, is it given man to 
know his God. No more is it possible for God, longing 
to reveal himself, in this way to make himself fully 
known. Man's needs and God's needs call for more. 
If there is not more, then God will inevitably be mis- 
understood by man. In man's best endeavors to judge 
of the divine attributes and perfections by these par- 
tial revelations about him he may draw honest con- 
clusions that are utterly incorrect. His moods of 
sadness or of gladness may prevail to the warping of 
his judgment. No revelation were almost preferable 
to one so liable to be misinterpreted. There needs to 
be some additional revelation of the divine charac- 
teristics or we are worse than confused. 

Now if there could be an actual incarnation of God 
himself, an incarnation of such surpassing glory that 
nothing cast into the opposite scale could ever out- 
weigh it, the question would be settled. If the Incar- 
nate One came to us on a mission of pure love, that 
fact would go far toward the solution. If God became 

1 Bishop Butler, reasoning indeed on another matter, incidentally re- 
marks on "the infinitely absurd supposition that we men ever know all 
the facts of a case." 



20 Advent and Ascension. 

incarnate in divine self-denial and self-sacrifice, in self- 
suffering evidently far beyond the limits of all com- 
prehension, and all this were done as an "offering for 
our sins" and to bring about an "eternal redemption" 
for us, then, before this highest possible proof, there 
would be triumphant vindication, and men would be 
compelled to say that here was a manifestation which 
showed, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that God 
is love. One would be justified in believing, notwith- 
standing all possible sorrows in this or in any other 
world, that here is a proof which outweighs all that 
can be alleged on the other side. If the darkness were 
a thousandfold darker this one fact would dispel it; 
for it shows that the God who gave the "Only Begot- 
ten" has himself taken all things into the account, and 
that he who sees all the shadows in his universe sees 
also that they do not overpower this sunshine. He 
knows his own perfection of love. Browning sings : 

"I say the acknowledgment of God in Christ, 
Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee 
All questions in the world and out of it." 

And again: 

"The Divine Instance of self-sacrifice 
That never ends and aye begins for man, 
So never miss I footing in the maze. 
No; I have light, nor fear the dark at all." 

The need of God to reveal himself, and equally the 
need of man to receive such a revelation of the very 
God himself, is only partially met by sending to the 



How Jesus Came to Us. 21 

race inspired patriarch, prophet, and apostle. They, 
taught of God, could teach men ; but teaching can never 
meet either the divine or the human craving for the 
coming of God himself. The divine illumination of a 
mere man and the incarnation of a God are widely 
different conceptions. Some such way of God's com- 
ing as that recorded in the Gospels and some such life 
as that lived by the Incarnate One described in Scrip- 
ture story would alone meet the demand. That way 
of coming would fitly introduce that kind of life which 
needed to be lived among men, and thus the highest 
form of certainty would be furnished. 1 

3. Is there any other more probable way for such a 
being to come to us than by some such birth ? 

It is clear that no one — not even God — can come 
into our human race except in the way we all came 
into it — by a human birth. He must be "born of a 



1 There are various kinds of certainty. Mathematical certainty has 
been much praised. But setting aside the fact that geometry rests en- 
tirely on "axioms" which can never be logically proved, though neces- 
sarily taken as true, this is clear: that mathematical proof pertains only 
to mathematics, and is absolutely valueless morally since it has no 
voluntariness. There is no act of will when we see the demonstration 
of the forty-seventh proposition of Euclid, and the element of will is a 
necessity to moral belief and therefore to moral certainty. Thus moral 
belief is a higher exercise of mind and heart than mere assent to 
mathematical demonstration. And inductive certainty has also been 
greatly praised, especially by scientific men; but it has always one ele- 
ment of uncertainty. We can never be quite sure that all the facts are 
in on which to found the induction. Only Omniscience knows them all 
on any one subject. Some newly discovered fact in optics or acoustics, 
some newly applied principle, such as that of evolution, may be the one 
fact or principle that shall not only change but exactly reverse the 
world's verdict. The nearest approach to certainty must always be the 
moral certainty of an earnest and devout soul accepting the facts of a 
revealed religion and led into their spiritual application by the Spirit of 
God. It is John, the most spiritual of the New Testament writers, who, 
before the historic facts of the gospel, uses most frequently the words 
"We know." 



22 Advent and Ascension. 

woman." He must be not one like us but actually one 
of us ; a partaker of our physical, mental, and moral 
nature. He must be not angelic in grade of being, but 
human; ''flesh of our flesh, spirit of our spirit." He 
must begin as a child, born from a human mother. 
And yet he must be sinless. If sin were a necessity of 
our human nature, if it were essential to being a man 
to be a sinner, the objection to a holy birth anywhere 
in our humanity would be fatal. But humanity was 
sinless in Eden and is also sinless in heaven. And so 
it can be sinless in the Coming One. There can be no 
need of holding that his mother shall be sinless, and 
then that her mother shall be found sinless also. Simple 
humanity, in itself, is not sinful humanity. The Com- 
ing One can be like us in every respect save that of 
sinfulness as he comes into our race in the one only 
way — that of birth. 

It was held among the people into whose nationality 
he would be most likely to be born that there was 
especial purity in the virgin life. It was held by them 
that through a virgin descended from a royal line such 
a one would come into the world. It might be ex- 
pected that God, suiting his methods to the ideas of the 
time so that he might the better be understood, would 
have some regard for these ineffaceable beliefs of the 
nation foremost in its moral convictions and expecta- 
tions. Virgin birth and royal descent were among 
these requirements, but there was equal need that the 
birth should be among men of lowly estate, on the 
plane where the toiling millions do their work, 



How Jesus Came to Us. 23 

The Coming One must, then, be born a human child, 
and grow up to the maturity of manhood, but he must 
see no decrepitude, and his work be done before age 
can write any wrinkle on his brow. Of virgin birth, 
of royal descent, yet reckoned among common people, 
he can span all social distinctions from prince to 
peasant, and, thus belonging to all classes, the word of 
his message will be for Jew and Gentile alike. His 
birth and life and death should be of one piece, each 
part illustrating the other and harmonizing with it, 
and the whole having its own wonderful uniqueness 
and completeness. What should such a person, so 
coming into our race, be expected to be and to do? 
He will be human, as we have seen ; but none the less 
will he be divine. There will be what Dr. van Dyke 
so happily calls "the human life of God." 1 It will not 
be the impossible thing, the human become the divine ; 
but the exact opposite, the divine become the human. 
How this can be we can no more understand than how 
God can be at all. We only know that it is not beyond 
Omnipotence. Whether this has been actually done 
we are to inquire in a subsequent chapter; 2 here and 
now the conditions which are involved in the problem 
are considered. 

And we do not need to hold that God becoming man 
would thereby be so limited that we should have only a 
man's measure of God. If we must speak, in such a 
matter, of any limitation it is self-limitation that we 
mean. But is it not, if we must use these coarse 

1 Gospc I for an Age of Doubt, chap. iv. 2 See chap. ii. 



24 Advent and Ascension. 

material terms, an extension rather than a limitation? 
When the great tide of the ocean comes in, its waters 
do not hold themselves back to the coast lines as set 
down in our geographies. They run up extending 
themselves into every bay and inlet, following the 
configuration of the land, suiting themselves to every 
varying need that those waters can supply. If we 
must use some physical term let us talk of God as 
extending his love and grace in an incarnation so as to 
suit his divinity to our humanity. But why use at all 
these coarser mechanical terms of limitation and ex- 
pansion? God is a Spirit, and the incarnation that 
meets our needs will be that of an Almighty One be- 
coming man, not of a finite man becoming God. Let 
words suited only to material relations be discarded. 
God is able to become incarnate. 1 

4. Would such an incarnation, followed by such a 
life, make the whole matter of religion more distinct 
and impressive? 

The idea of God has been, up to a certain point, 
wonderfully potent in human history and in individual 
experience. Mr. Kidd in his Social Evolution has 
fitly rebuked those who would construct a sociology 
by forgetting the force of moral ideas in the past and 
by failing to take them into account in estimating the 
future. Theism, even aside from the facts of Chris- 
tianity, has had a large mission. It furnishes an intel- 

1 Balfour, speaking of those who would use exclusively the inductive 
method and so refuse all other forms of proof, says: "We should not 
be surprised nor embarrassed if the unique mystery of the Christian 
faith refuses to yield itself to the inductive treatment." 



How Jesus Came to Us. 25 

lectual satisfaction to the mind inquiring as to the 
origin of the universe about us and within us. It is 
the topstone of an intellectual pyramid that stands 
foursquare. Rooted in the mind, among its primary 
convictions as some claim, a preparation in the very 
constitution of our human nature for the idea, from 
whatever source that idea comes to us, this conviction 
is so far a subjective idea. It may be strengthened by 
our careful reasonings, but even then it is from within 
us, our own idea. And this fact, that it is a subjective 
idea in its beginning and is fortified by our own rea- 
sonings, also subjective, shows its limitations. It can 
go just so far. There it stops and waits for something 
external, something specially objective; something to 
be seen, touched, manifested in space and time. The 
inward impression needs outward helpfulness. This 
is shown by the vast number of things men have 
devised to make the idea of God more distinct and 
potent. The appeal has been to the eye and ear. 
Hence images of the gods, sacred relics, and voices, 
and omens ; holy places and holy days ; rituals of wor- 
ship with their appliances for expression and impres- 
sion. Men have sought to invigorate and sustain the 
subjective idea by the use of objective things. What 
is needed is some vast demonstration outside our own 
consciousness of our states of inward feeling and con- 
viction. Agreeing therewith, at the same time, it must 
go vastly further. Is there anything else that can do 
this so well as an incarnation of God — the very God 
himself? Theism can find a limited revelation of God 



26 Advent and Ascension. 

in all things, and, indeed, in all souls ; but Christianity, 
with its incarnation, goes on very far beyond what 
material things, and even the human soul of Jesus 
himself, could exhibit. One great unparalleled setting 
forth of God himself seen as God — not filling out 
the powers of a man, but "becoming" man for us — 
that would be the perfect meeting of all requirement. 
That would take the things of religion out of all our 
human dimness into the eternal sunlight. And if we 
can hear a Christ say, "He that hath seen me hath seen 
the Father," that suffices for evermore. There can be 
no want that a true incarnation will not meet and 
satisfy. 

Not the restoration of God to man only, but equally 
the restoration of man to God, will come through 
such an incarnation. Sin is distance. Sinners are 
wanderers. If former sin can be forgiven, if present 
sin can be put away, if future eternal life can be se- 
cured, if we can be reinstated in our lost relation, if 
these whole matters of the soul's restoration can be 
procured for us and wrought in us through some 
great revelation brought home to the world in historic 
authenticity, and brought home also to each soul in a 
spiritual realization, and if this can be done by an 
incarnation of God himself, then the old dimness will 
be replaced by clearest vision, the old distance by a 
new and delightful nearness. God will be no more 
abstract and vague. He will be a "God nigh at hand." 
And the incarnation will bring God so near that we 
can speak, alike in the language of the heart and the 



How Jesus Came to Us. 27 

head, of one who is "Immanuel, God with us," and the 
heart of God and the heart of man can be made one 
again. 

Astronomers have been stationed far apart on the 
earth's surface to observe a coming eclipse. Each man, 
though at great distance from any other man, points his 
tube directly at the same sun. In that one act their 
separation becomes union. They are one in looking up 
to the great source of solar radiance. Their common 
thought and interest centers in that sun. And here, 
in the realm of religion, if there is the one great 
spectacle of the Only Begotten assuming manhood 
that in the Incarnation he may meet the deepest needs 
alike of God's justice and love and of man's weakness 
and sin, and if on him, as he enters upon a career to be 
pursued along the way of a marvelous life, of an aton- 
ing death, and of a culminating resurrection, God's 
gaze can be fixed in holy approval, and if the same 
fact can also catch and hold the gaze of man — man as 
a race and each man as an individual — then God and 
man, both looking with sympathetic intentness and 
appreciative love on the same divine Son, become one 
again. The heart of God and the heart of man can 
apprehend each other in the Incarnation. 

5. Can we think of any better way, all things con- 
sidered, for giving to the world satisfactory evidence 
of the Incarnation than that furnished in the New 
Testament ? 

Notice that the method is in consonance with the de- 
mands of that age, and also that it has in view the men 



28 Advent and Ascension. 

of all the succeeding centuries. Jesus is not repre- 
sented as writing any one line of his own teachings. 
Nor should such an omission on his part surprise us. 
It was the method of his time that the disciples of a 
great teacher should first of all bear oral witness to 
his words and deeds. Hence the fitness, in the earliest 
years of the new faith, of what has been called the 
"oral gospel," the verbal proclamation of the Lord's 
teachings. But the time would come when, for the 
sake of establishing the gospel and transmitting it to 
men the world around and the centuries through, 
there must be authentic documents. Plainly there 
should be, first of all, not the details, but the promulga- 
tion of the general principles of this gospel by some one 
of comprehensive grasp who could see the relation of 
part to part, and of all the parts to the great whole. It 
was needful that the divine conception of the events 
should precede the human records of them. Some- 
thing like our Epistles, written by one able to take a 
comprehensive view of the new faith, was the primal 
need. No one of the twelve, at the outset certainly, 
was the man for this work. They were the best pos- 
sible men to fill in the details in subsequent sketches, 
such as our Gospels, provided always that some master 
mind should first disclose the purpose, the meaning, 
the pantology of the whole movement. The main 
thing, of course, about the new gospel was the divine 
conception of its character and its scope. There was 
need of a master mind to grasp the ideas that were 
fundamental and to set them forth to the world. Such 



How Jesus Came to Us. 29 

a man was Paul, whose earlier Epistles antedate the 
Gospels not only in the order of intellectual concep- 
tion but in order of composition. 1 The Gospels simply 
fill in the details of the broader thought of the earlier 
Epistles. In order of event, of course, the facts re- 
corded in the Gospels preceded the Epistles ; but, on the 
other hand, the earliest Epistles, not only in date of 
composition but in the order in which a believer in 
the earliest Christian centuries would receive them, 
which is the true spiritual order, would come first. 
An inquirer would first want to know that God in 
Jesus Christ had offered salvation to men. Details at 
first were not needed — are not the first thing needed 
in any age, as the gospel comes to an inquirer. Paul 
saw Christianity as a whole. The nearest thing to 
him was Christ's resurrection. 2 But such a resurrec- 
tion presupposes some such a death, and this, in turn, 
some such a life; and this presupposes some such an 
incarnation. And this wholeness of the gospel as a 
single broad conception took the eye and supplied 
the spiritual need of the thousands of converts; as 
is manifest in the constant references made in the 
Epistles to the things these converts are said already 



1 The first group of Paul's Epistles (Thessalonians and Romans) are 
assigned to about A. D. 53-55; while Mark's Gospel, antedating by 
several years the other Gospels, is now generally assigned to about 
A. D. 65. Paul's second group of Epistles (Galatians and Corinthians) 
is assigned to about A. D. 54-58. Both groups precede the Gospels. 

2 "Paul was in a better position to estimate their general meaning than 
those whose minds were occupied with the details. For him these facts 
were lost in the one fact of Christ's death as the manifestation of a 
spiritual principle." "He saw the master-meaning of Christ's whole 
work." — Evolution of Religion, E. C. Caird in Gifford Lectures, pp. 
194, 195. 



30 Advent and Ascension. 

to believe. This is the way Christianity comes to 
genuine converts in every age. It is by the broad, 
strong apprehension, in some fair degree, of the Chris- 
tian scheme as a scheme that men at the outset come 
to believe. Afterward men ask about the details in 
Christ's life. Nobody directs an inquirer in any age 
to the details given by Luke and Matthew of the virgin 
birth. The logical and moral order chosen by the 
New Testament is the Epistle, putting the outline facts 
in doctrinal form, and subsequently comes the detail 
of separate facts in the Gospels. There are those who 
think that, if they must make their choice for their 
knowledge of Christianity, they would rather sur- 
render the Gospels than the Epistles. Happily we 
need surrender neither. 

It is probable, also, that the Epistles had wider 
publication in the first century than the Gospels, and 
it is to be regarded as an especial plan of God that, 
subsequently, Gospels and Epistles came to be parallel 
in their composition and their circulation; the later 
Epistles of Paul and Peter and James interpreting the 
Gospels under divine guidance. And the Gospels 
which give us in narrative form the circumstances of 
the virgin birth are just the two which should do it, 
and the two that omit it are the very two in which 
such details would awaken suspicion. John sees the 
Lord as the being of dateless ages; the eternal Son 
who in his earthly career just touched, as it were in- 
cidentally, these mortal shores. And Mark for just 
the opposite reason, that he wrote rapidly for the 



How Jesus Came to Us. 31 

Roman world, presenting Jesus as Master — the form 
that would best take and hold its attention — has no 
need to give the details of the virgin birth. The two 
evangelists give it who should. Luke's two chapters 
are pure and chaste and delicate, showing traces of 
the very words in which the virgin mother would con- 
fide to him the holy secret. Luke does not philosophize. 
He lays down no doctrine. That had been done by 
Paul, who had said that Jesus "was born of a woman," 
and who claims that this Jesus was "God manifested 
in the flesh." 

It is obvious, then, that when one would get "back 
to Christ" — the popular phrase of many — he must do 
it by the way of Paul, to whom we are indebted for 
our earliest documentary evidence of Christ's existence. 
The wisdom that planned this peculiar order and style 
of the New Testament writings is manifest. The wide 
difference between Paul's four earliest Epistles, in 
which he prepares the way for the documentary evi- 
dence, and his later Epistles, which are explanatory 
and hortatory, is very remarkable. The play and inter- 
play of Epistle and Gospel and Acts and Apocalypse 
are all a steadily accumulating series of proofs that 
have in mind not only the primitive but the more 
advanced ages of Christianity. Writing for their more 
immediate times, as do all Scripture writers, these men 
in their Epistles and Gospels, whether they knew it or 
not, were serving as well the ages to come. 

And so the Infinite Wisdom that devised the Incar- 
nation did not leave the testimony that was to establish 



32 Advent and Ascension. 

the fact to any accidental circumstances, but furnished 
the world, in a way far better than any other that we 
can conceive, with the most careful methods possible 
of preserving the evidence of the most wonderful of 
all wonderful events 



How Jesus Came to Us. 33 



CHAPTER II. 
The Witnesses to the Incarnation. 

In the previous chapter we have seen the world-wide 
expectation of and demand for an incarnation; the 
manifest need of it, also, if God would be understood 
and man was to understand him ; the positive require- 
ment of it if religion, ceasing to be a mere opinion, 
was to become a profound and influential conviction; 
the necessity of it if the best subjective aspiration, 
through a corresponding objective manifestation, was 
to have the requisite vigor, and thus a potent inspira- 
tion be gained toward securing the highest ideal of 
living. Certain objections considered were seen to be 
without special force, and thus the way was prepared 
for our present inquiry concerning the witnesses to the 
Incarnation. 1 The contents of their testimony are to 
be subsequently considered. The inquiry now is about 
the witnesses and their means of knowing that to which 
they testify. 

The witnesses are (1) God himself; (2) Jesus 

1 If a great moral need in human souls is met by a supernatural fact, 
then there is also the need of competent witnesses to the fact; other- 
wise the fact is useless to the world. Men can testify not to a miracle 
as a miracle, but only to a fact as a fact. That the fact amounts to a 
miracle is only an inference from the fact. Its supernaturalness has 
nothing to do with the proof of the fact itself. It must be judged by 
the laws of evidence; and the character, the means of knowledge, the 
the intellectual and, above all, the moral worth of the witnesses are 
matters to be duly estimated. 



34 Advent and Ascension. 

Christ, his Son, before and after his advent; (3) the 
apostles who had kept company with the Lord Jesus 
Christ and had listened to his own testimony and to 
that of those who knew the "holy secret" of his birth 
and the corresponding manner of his life; and, 
finally, (4) the whole company of spiritual believers 
through the Christian centuries who have felt the in- 
ward power of the gospel facts, involving, as they do, 
the supernatural birth of the Lord. 

1. God himself has borne witness through men. 

It is told of a man fresh from European civilization 
that he once attempted to explain the mechanism of 
his watch to an untutored native just out of an African 
jungle. It was no easy thing to do. He could not 
speak of mainspring and escapement, of hands and of 
dial plate. All that was an unknown tongue to his 
hearer. He did the best in his power, and he believed 
that the man gained a fair idea of the watch, but he 
confessed himself not a little hampered and hindered 
by the ignorance of the man on the Congo. We may 
conceive that in some similar way God was hindered 
and hampered when he would give to man the desired 
testimony of his Son in the days before the Incarna- 
tion. He must needs use men if he would add direct 
testimony to the manifestations of himself that he had 
always been affording to the human race in the physical 
world. He would now speak, use human language, 
employ men. A certain degree of imperfection 
through the using of these men as his instruments 
must be theoretically conceded. It is true, indeed, that 



How Jesus Came to Us. 35 

for those who regard certain chosen men as divinely 
inspired, the imperfection is reduced to a minimum. It 
even disappears. But in a progressive revelation in 
which, with advancing clearness, certain fundamental 
ideas are presented there still remain the rudeness of 
former ages, the imperfect conceptions of the earlier 
centuries. There is, however, the widest difference 
between directly erroneous statement and statement 
that, correct as far as it goes, is imperfect only because 
it fails to give the full-orbed truth. Nor need we think 
of this as limitation, but the rather as adaptation ; just 
as the incoming tide of the ocean adapts itself to every 
inlet of the varying shore. If the Coming One could, 
being God, become man, then there could be incontest- 
able testimony to the fact that God speaks to men. 
The Living Word possible, the written word would 
be a possibility in attestation of the Christ who was to 
come in due time. To deny that God could infallibly 
communicate his will through inspired men is to deny 
God himself. The more serious thing is to get himself 
understood when God will speak, will use our human 
language in giving us his testimony. But, whether 
understood or not, this is sure: he has spoken on this 
matter of the Incarnation. "The Father himself hath 
borne witness." 1 "This is the witness of God." 2 "God 
at sundry times and in divers manners hath spoken.'' 3 
He, as we should expect, is the chief witness. He has 
not only spoken to man but spoken by man; giving 
in this way the highest forms of proof which he can 

1 John v, 37. 2 1 John v, 9. 3 Heb. i, 1, 2. 



36 Advent and Ascension. 

give or man can receive. Some of these divine testi- 
monies were given before Christ came. God took 
those "sundry times" at periods when the world needed 
especial testimony. He took, also, those "divers man- 
ners," sometimes by using physical miracle, which 
contained always in itself that elemental teaching best 
suited to the emergencies of an age; sometimes by 
establishing religious rites, meaningless apart from 
their prophetic aspect but overflowing with signifi- 
cance as predictions of an incarnation; sometimes by, 
his prophets, he ingrafting upon their natural forecast 
a divine foresight; sometimes by poets, he using their 
human genius at its highest and bestowing glimpses 
of a more than human inspiration. He took historians, 
men of industry, of great research in the literatures of 
the world, skilled in judging of the future by the past, 
and upon their natural judgment he superinduced such 
divine judgment of human affairs that their writings 
abound in glimpses of a Coming One who should be 
Prophet and Priest and King and Saviour. He took 
patriots, whose natural longings and aspirations for 
the welfare of their people were intense, and he en- 
larged, purified, directed, and inspired all their de- 
sires and their hopes, and gave them grand vision 
of a Deliverer for the whole race from the bondage 
of sin. In short, we may say that there seems to 
be nothing usable that God did not use in bearing 
testimony to the coming advent of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. 

There is a word occurring with notable frequency 



How Jesus Came to Us. 37 

on the pages of the New Testament. It is the word 
"witness." It is used with its corresponding word, 
"testimony," more than a hundred times. Every New 
Testament writer, without exception, employs it. 
John, not content with using it here and there, reiter- 
ates it so that it has been called "the key word" to his 
writings. The writer of the Acts records the fact of 
its constant use in the apostolic addresses. All this 
abundant employment of the word shows the great 
carefulness, not only of apostles and of early Chris- 
tians, but of God himself, who inspired their teaching 
and the record of it, to put before the world the idea 
that the new religion was built on the basis of exact 
historical facts susceptible of proof. There was to be 
light enough for any man who had the fair mind, the 
upright intent, and whose moral vision had been kept 
clear enough to see what evidence God himself had 
furnished to the world. The proof was not to be 
mathematical, for this realm is higher than mathe- 
matics. Nor was it to be scientific, for science, as we 
now use that term, was unborn; and in any age only 
a few foremost men can use its methods, while this 
religion was to offer its proof to all. Those addressed 
were to be considered not as scientific or nonscientific, 
but as men — men open to the kind of proof God had 
to offer. It was to be intellectual and moral proof in 
perfect combination — the strongest kind of proof that 
it is possible to submit to the consideration of mankind. 
Head and heart — neither alone but each as helping the 
other — were to have their united satisfaction, and so 



38 Advent and Ascension. 

there was to be a certainty of conviction that can be 
secured by no other kind of proof. 

This testimony comes to us as literature, 1 but there 
is always a divine peculiarity in it. To "study it simply 
as literature," as one studies literature in Shakespeare, 
is to study the frame of the picture and to overlook 
the picture itself. It is "the more than literature in it" 
that gives it its unique character. Its literary form is 
simply an incidental help in the interpretation of 
"God's witness" herein given to men. No doubt there 
were "vague longings in the hearts of the Hebrew 
bards and prophets;" but to see these only is to miss 
the most remarkable thing about their writings; is to 
forget that Scripture came not in the old time by the 
will of men, but "holy men of God spake as they were 
moved by the Holy Spirit." 2 This latter fact must 
always be the aspect more wonderful, more important, 
and so more to be noted than any merely literary form. 
No doubt it is true, as has been alleged, "that a 
national Messiah who should be a political deliverer 
was the expectation of the Jews, and so was a kind of 
natural as well as national prophecy in all the prophetic 
writings of the Hebrews." But this is the very thing 
that God, who uses all that can be used, has seized 



1 "A revelation attended by prophecies and miracles is a conceivable 
proposition, and might teach us that which otherwise we could not 
know." — Articles of Negative Creed, quoted from Contemporary Review. 

2 2 Pet. i, 2i. It is Balfour's suggestive comment "that there must 
be some means of marking off those examples of its operation — that of 
inspiration — which rightfully command our full intellectual allegiance 
from those which are no more than evidences of an influence toward 
the truth, working out its purpose slowly through the ages." — The. 
Foundations of Belief, p. 34. 



How Jesus Came to Us. 39 

upon and broadened out and lifted up, until patriotic 
feeling could take in the more spiritual conception. 
To stop back with this "merely natural prophecy of 
Hebrew bards" is to stop back at the alphabet of a 
language and to overlook its use in communicating 
thought. No doubt, as some assert, "these men saw 
first of all the nearest things in the national life/' but 
they saw more and more important things. These 
nearest things served, in God's design, as suggestions 
of farthest things. They were the "sight on the rifle" 
along which the marksman looks when aiming at the 
distant object. Each national deliverance possesses a 
chief interest to us because of the onward glance of 
the prophet's eye to the great Deliverer. Each "nearer 
thing to them" we may look upon for a moment be- 
cause, under "the law of prophetic suggestion," it helps, 
us to interpret the thing nearer to us and more im- 
portant to us — its relation to the coming of our Lord 
and to what he should be and do for the wide world of 
mankind. Sometimes, as in the call of Moses at the 
burning bush, 1 as in the call of Isaiah at the temple 
service, 2 as in that of Samuel in the house of the Lord, 3 
there was an audible voice. Sometimes God came by a 
dream of the night* and sometimes by a vision of the 
day. 5 Sometimes the prophet is momentarily over- 
powered; but for the most part he is perfectly con- 
scious. "The spirits of the prophets were subject to 
the prophets." 8 Their God was not the God of confu- 

1 Exod. iii, 2. 2 Isa. vi, 8. 3 1 Sam. iii, 4. 

4 Jer. i, 4. 5 Ezek. i, 3. 6 1 Cor. xiv, 29-33. 



40 Advent and Ascension. 

sion. The heathen prophets gave themselves up to an 
insane frenzy and exhibited bodily contortions as proof 
that their god spoke through them. But a special sanity 
marked the true prophets. Their natural faculties 
were elevated, purified, strengthened, and inspired so 
that there was divine meaning in human speech. They 
were as far as possible from "amanuenses of the Holy 
Spirit," but sometimes their words had more meaning 
and further application than they knew. There were, 
as we learn from the New Testament, constant pro- 
phetic glances that even we, in our sharper light, could 
not have seen but for the Messianic meanings put 
upon their words by our Lord and his apostles. In a 
landscape, we may stand directly in front of a vast 
range of hills and see the height of each and the val- 
leys between them. That is the view of the historian. 
Or we may go round to the end of the range, and we 
see now not a single valley, but only hill melting into 
hill, their summits only visible, and appearing often 
as one mountain. That is the manner of prophecy. 
One prophet sees a near-by thing in the national life. 
It suggests some event in the incarnate life of the 
Coming One. Another prophet is led to see the nearer 
thing in Israel, and the event connects itself, to his 
prophetic view, in character, though not in time, with 
the Bethlehem birth. It is some feature of the Incarna- 
tion — the becoming a man. It is always some act done 
or suffering endured by one coming into the race by 
the gateway of birth. He is never, as in the heathen 
myths, a full-grown man, a demigod, thrust in upon 



How Jesus Came to Us. 41 

the race. He is always one with us because one 
of us. 

It has been alleged that we are given in prophecy an 
"ideal sketch," "the general picture of a noble character 
who is sometimes a noble sufferer and a righteous 
servant of the Lord." And some would reduce all the 
prophecies of Christ to these "ideal pictures," thus 
making them to be fulfilled more or less perfectly by 
all who are good men. But to stop with these "ideal 
pictures," even if their existence be granted, is to con- 
tent one's self with remaining outside the temple when 
one may enter and behold its larger glory. It is to 
invert the telescope and so minimize the objects to 
which it is directed. It is to forget the definiteness that 
names the place of our Lord's birth, that predicts 
incident after incident in his life as afterward recorded 
in the New Testament. It is to forget that the New 
Testament declares, of some of these incidents, that 
"this was done that the scripture might be fulfilled 
which the prophet spake." The virgin birth was fore- 
told, as well as the Calvary death, and so many inci- 
dents between the two were disclosed that some have 
called Isaiah "our fifth evangelist." 

And historians as well as prophets have the vital 
eye and the spiritual vision. Taught to predict the 
future by their knowledge of what had brought bless- 
ing or cursing in the past, recording occasions when 
God intervened for his people, their wisdom came to 
have a kind of natural insight — if you will, a naturally 
prophetic element — in it. They saw how events had a 



42 Advent and Ascension. 

certain trend. Surely God, using all means, would not 
fail to use such men, giving to them the "divine 
glance." He caused them to see the Messiah's day. 
The birth and life and death of "the One sent of God" 
were the great things in which all history was seen to 
culminate. And these historians recorded the divine 
institution of religious rites, meaningless apart from 
an incarnation, but surcharged with the utmost sig- 
nificance when regarded as prophetic of the Christ to 
come. True, the heathen religions had their sacred 
rites, and while many of them were licentious, degrad- 
ing, and even horrible, some few of them, among the 
better class of those religions, attained to some general 
moral significance. Sometimes there was beauty amid 
deformity; nature-myths expressed certain facts in the 
processes of the seasons, certain facts of human life 
and death; but those rites did not center in a person. 
They were suggested by sun, moon, and stars, by the 
storm and the sea. They were not prophetic. They 
sprang from no writing of a divine thought. They 
had in view no divine incarnation. In exact contrast 
to all this, each Hebrew rite looked on to a definite 
fact : the birth, the life, the death, the resurrection, and 
the reign of the Coming One. They testified to him as 
holy, harmless, undefiled ; coming into our race as the 
Lamb of God for our sacrifice, as the Lord for our 
obedience, the Teacher to interpret for us the ancient 
mysteries and to show us how they all center in him- 
self. Every rite was prophetic of something about the 
Christ to come. 



How Jesus Came to Us. 43 

Very instructive was the development of the original 
promise. Some see in that primal promise a mere hint, 
to be followed by stronger hints in the developed idea. 
It reads, "I will put enmity between thee and the 
woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall 
bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." 1 But 
others see a vast, strong, unmistakable outline in this 
primitive promise. It is "the protevangelium," or 
First Gospel. The whole statue is in the marble, and 
by degrees the figure shall become more and more 
shapely under the hand of the divine artist. Each new 
blow shall bring out something distinctive in form or 
feature. The whole idea was given, so some claim, at 
the outset. It is only the detail, and not the original 
idea, that is progressive. But this at least is certain, 
that the idea is that of birth. The seed of the woman 
is to bruise the serpent's head, though it shall bruise 
his heel. No full-grown man is to be thrust into the 
race. The Coming One comes to the cradle and grows 
up to his maturity and does his work of reversing the 
curse. 

Then comes in due order the filling in of the grand 
outlines of the picture. Shem's children — it is birth 
and childhood again — are "blessed by the Lord God 
of Shem." : Another feature comes out in the picture 
in the promise to Abraham and his seed — again it is 
birth; this time in a definite family. 3 And we learn 
from our Lord's interpretation of the Abrahamic 
promise that the main reference was to spiritual bless- 

1 Gen. iii, 15. 2 Gen. ix, 26. 3 Gen. xii, 3. 



44 Advent and Ascension. 

ing, and the main blessing was in connection with the 
coming Christ: He "rejoiced to see my day . . . 
and was glad." x So, too, the Shiloh prediction em- 
phasizes birth followed by the subsequent success of 
Christ as the "one sent of God." 2 Moses's words 
about a "Prophet" show another distinct feature in the 
grand portrait. 3 "He [Moses] wrote of me," said our 
Lord. The thought is again of birth and of growth to 
manhood, when "God's words should be put in his 
mouth." For it is not the prediction of a long line of 
prophets — a general consensus of men speaking for 
God — but of a specific person "among his brethren." 
There were also significant theophanies, or "God- 
manifestations." These were the "yesterdays" of that 
Christ who is "the same yesterday, and to-day, and 
forever." 4 He is the "Angel of the Lord" addressed 
as Jehovah on various occasions. He is the "captain 
of the Lord's host" to Joshua. 5 In David's day he is 
the unfailing seed of David, and the unconditional 
promise of a perpetual King to Israel is fulfilled only 
as Christ, the spiritual King, takes up and broadens 
out the prediction. 8 And here again it is "the seed;" 
the Christ comes by the way of birth. Then follow 
"the prophets" whose writings we have. The divine 
artist constantly is bringing out additional features of 
the Lord. His birth as a "Son" is made prominent. 
He is, in the grandest promises, of the royal "seed of 
David" — always the birth and the family. The Mes- 



1 John viii, 56. 2 Gen. xlix, 10. 3 Deut. xviii, 18. 

4 Heb. xiri, 8, 5 Josh. v, 14. 6 2 Sam. xxii, 51. 



How Jesus Came to Us. 4S 

sianic line is the unfailing conception of all the proph- 
ets: "To him give all the prophets witness." 1 Pres- 
ently they name the place of his birth. Presently they 
disclose his humble surroundings and yet his regal 
position. There are hints of the time and circum- 
stances which can afterward be interpreted only as 
references to the manger birth. When one carefully 
studies all these utterances he is delighted not only 
with their fullness but with their reserve. For 
prophecy is not history written beforehand; it is the 
happy suggestion that afterward is seen to have had 
such admirable fitness as the prediction of historic fact. 

2. There is also the testimony of Jesus Christ to 
himself. 

He was to be "the Prophet." 2 It would be strange 
if he had not been his own witness in this matter. 
We are told that the "Spirit of Christ" was in the old 
prophets. They are said to have "searched diligently 
what the Spirit of Christ which was in them did sig- 
nify." 3 The words are not those elsewhere used of the 
words of the apostles, who are said to be inspired by 
the Holy Spirit. And this inspiration of the "Spirit 
of Christ" as the Spirit of prophecy is what we should 
naturally expect. When our Lord was on earth he 
turned the attention of a company of disciples to 
prophecies "concerning himself." 4 He looked back- 
ward as well as forward; to the Scripture already 

1 Acts x, 43. " The doctrine of a personal Messiah," says Dr. Felix 
Adler, "is the purple thread which runs through the writings of all 
our prophets." 

2 Deut. xviii, 15. 3 1 Pet. i, 11. 4 Luke xxiv, 27. 



46 Advent and Ascension. 

written and to the Scripture to come. The prophetic 
Christ is as much a reality as the historic Christ. "He 
was" — in the old prophetic days — "in the world, and 
the world was made by him, and the world knew 
him not." 1 In those grand "yesterdays" 2 of his former 
existence he was giving testimony. He was "the faith- 
ful Witness" whenever a prophet spoke of the coming 
of the Messiah. 3 He was not silent in those ages when 
things were not as yet ripe for his appearance "in the 
flesh." His testimony to himself was but imperfectly 
understood by the prophets. They are represented as 
studying out with great care and with indifferent suc- 
cess what the "Spirit of Christ which was in them did 
signify." Their own thought and experience were not 
the measure of their own revelation. Christ's thought 
was broader than their thought. They spoke better 
than they knew because Christ spoke in them. So 
that we may claim every prediction about incarnation 
as not alone that of David, Isaiah, and the rest of the 
prophets, but as the testimony of Christ himself. He 
is not to be thought of as nonexistent or as noncom- 
municative before his advent, but as uttering himself 
continually through "all the prophets." 

When he came into our human nature and stood 
among us, there were obvious reasons why he could 
not publicly speak of the lesser incidents connected 
with his humble birth. It was clear to the Jews that 
he did not start as a full-grown man. He had entered 
the race by the one gateway for all men. He had been 

1 John i, 10. 2 Heb. xiii, 8. 8 Rev. i, 5. 



How Jesus Came to Us. 47 

born of a human mother. What need of his asserting 
this fact ? At that time no one denied it. Incidentally, 
indeed, he said, "To this end was I born." x And his 
repeated declarations about his previous celestial ex- 
istence, about his coming from his native heaven and 
his speedy return thereto, his words about himself as 
sent by the Father, and about his departure to Him 
that sent him — all these are explicit testimony. The 
details of his marvelous birth were to be given pres- 
ently, with other important events, when "he should 
be crucified," and the "Holy Spirit should guide" his 
followers, called to write our Gospels, "into all truth." ; 
These details come fitly, and from the very evangelists 
whose object in writing would lead them to speak, 
after due knowledge, about the virgin birth. They 
knew what the claims of an incarnation involved, and 
their words of definiteness were spoken in no hesitating 
way. 

3. The testimony of the disciples of Jesus. 

When the time came for an incarnation of God in 
man the important thing, next to< the Incarnation itself, 
was to secure such credible witnesses of the facts that 
every fair-minded man studying their testimony should 
be sure that such an incarnation had actually occurred. 
The mission of the Twelve was unique. Of varying 
temperament, belonging neither to the densely igno- 
rant nor to the rabbinically learned, but of the great 
middle class of intelligent Hebrews, who would be 
the best observers and so make the best witnesses of 

1 John xviii, 37. 2 John xvi, 13. 



48 Advent and Ascension. 

the smaller matters of fact, these men had their three 
years of careful training. But we can readily see that 
this tendency and ability to note and testify to details 
in Christ's wonderful career would render them likely, 
at the outset, to fail even in the selection of details for 
their story, because of their lack of that comprehensive 
grasp of the broad meaning of Christ's coming and 
work, and of the fundamental ideas of the new religion. 
Exactly adapted for the thing they were to do, the best 
possible class of witnesses to single and separate facts, 
their especial preparation for that specific work was, 
to say the least, no help toward the other ; some would 
even say that their knowledge of detail was a hindrance 
to their comprehension. In a machine shop a mechanic 
may have wrought so long at making certain parts of 
a complicated engine as to be perfect at that one thing ; 
and yet he might not, until after some observation and 
practice, be able to set up the parts he had made into 
one completed machine ready to do its work. 

There was a need which no devotion of Peter and 
James and -John could supply. There was needed 
some one mind that could grasp the whole as a whole ; 
could see the radical ideas of the system and formulate 
its underlying doctrines, and who could also condescend 
to those men of low estate of whom not all, indeed, but 
a considerable number of the earliest believers must be 
composed. Such a man was provided in Paul, fore- 
most man of the new dispensation as Moses had been 
of the old. Converted early in the century, he had 
retired to Arabia and employed three years in examin- 



How Jesus Came to Us. 49 

ing the facts and in adjusting his head to his heart. He 
foresaw that the new religion must be one of authentic 
document, and the earliest books of the New Testa- 
ment were from his pen. The subsequently written 
Gospels were merely the filling in, by the record of 
the specific acts of Jesus of Nazareth, of the great 
divine thought — a thought more fully grasped by Paul 
than by any other apostle. The one great fact, as he 
saw it, comprehending all other detailed facts, was 
that the Christ had come by whom sinners could be 
forgiven, regenerated, and saved. It was the gospel 
as a whole that he grasped, and to which he bore wit- 
ness as one who had last of all seen the risen Christ — a 
resurrection that carried with it the previous birth and 
life and death. Years went by before the books that 
we call the Gospels were written, but Paul had sent out 
his Epistles with their amazing grasp of mingled fact 
and doctrine and precept. 

"Back to Christ" is one of our phrases in recent 
theological literature. True, some, like Tolstoi, have 
used the phrase to carry us back past all the Epistles, 
and even past all the other utterances of Jesus, to his 
Sermon on the Mount. They would intimate that the 
"individuality of the writer" comes out especially in 
the Epistles. Yet it is difficult to see why there is 
larger room for this element in the one class of writings 
than in the other. John is a writer both of Epistle and 
Gospel, and Peter — if it be granted that he is behind 
Mark in the Gospel that goes under the name of the 
latter — is, equally, a writer in both classes of docu- 
4 



50 Advent and Ascension. 

ments, and the charges of "undue personality" and 
"educational limitation" are not justly urged against 
the one more than against the other, while for careful- 
ness and mastery of principles the writer of the earlier 
Epistles stands out preeminently. "Personal equation" 
is the happy fact in both Epistle and Gospel, so far as 
the definite aim of each writer is concerned. Each 
Epistle and none the less each Gospel, is written by a 
man who had a definite purpose in writing. The 
phrase "back to Christ" is, then, to be retained, not- 
withstanding some unfortunate perversions of it. To 
"go back to Christ" is to go back to Paul, our earliest 
New Testament writer. The Epistles to the Thessa- 
lonians, to the Galatians, to the Corinthians, and to the 
Romans, in chronological order, preceded the writings 
of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These Epistles 
do not have the biographical form of the evangelical 
narratives, but they show how the early preachers 
preached before the Gospels were written, and how 
the early converts took up the great themes of the new 
religion as these met the minds and hearts of men. It 
is surprising to find how much of this Gospel material 
Paul assumes as known and names as vital, in these 
earliest Christian writings which were composed ex- 
pressly for believers. Of course there is little detail, 
but the one great fact of Jesus Christ as an Incarnation 
of God is always his dominating fact. In the Epistles 
to the Thessalonians, the earliest of his writings, Paul, 
who had been trained to the strictest monotheism, puts 
Christ's name close to that of God, giving them equal 



How Jesus Came to Us. 51 

and joint authority. "God our Father" and "our Lord 
Jesus Christ" are named side by side in the opening 
verses, and are named again, jointly, in the middle of 
the First Epistle and at its end. 1 The same construc- 
tion occurs repeatedly in the Second Epistle, which at 
its close omits the name of God, saying, "The grace of 
our Lord Jesus Christ be with you." The Epistles 
abound in references to the great facts of the gospel — 
the coming, the death, the resurrection, and the second 
advent of Jesus Christ. And we have Christ named 
with Jehovah. In three of these books we have his co- 
ordination with the Father. 2 He is God over all. 3 He 
is the author of creation. 4 He is God's own Son incar- 
nate. 5 He came from heaven. 6 He disclosed Godhead 
in humanity. 7 In his strong book on the Incarnation 
of the Son of God Gore says, after citing the facts 
above named: "Thus in order of time Christ is [in 
these Epistles] first divine, afterward human; but in 
order of his self-disclosure, first human, then divine. 
He showed his divinity through his humanity. He 
appeared as man ; afterward through the evidences of 
his manhood men came to believe in his Godhead. In 
part this belief was due to his miracles of power, in 
part to the spirit of holiness which gave his miracles a 
moral character and impressiveness ; at the last resort, 
it was to his resurrection. He was shown to be the 
Son of God by the resurrection from the dead." 8 

1 1 Thess. i, i-io ; iii, 13 ; v, 23. 

3 Rom. i, 7 ; 1 Cor. i, 3 ; 2 Cor. xiii, 14. 3 Rom. ix, 5. 

4 1 Cor. viii, 6. 5 Rom. viii, 3 ; Gal. iv, 4. 6 1 Cor. xv, 47. 

7 Rom. i, 3. 8 Incarnation^ Gore, p. 65. 



52 Advent and Ascension. 

The Christ of the Epistles is the Christ of the Gos- 
pels. In the Epistles we get back to the thought of 
God in sending his son. In Paul's writings "we have," 
to use his own words, "the mind of Christ." It is true 
that afterward the facts are rilled out with more full- 
ness of detail in the Gospels, but the groundwork of 
this great divine thought is shown us through the 
Epistles. For, here as elsewhere, the thought back 
of the deeds and words is the main thing. It is what 
a man really is that best interprets what he says and 
does. If you can discover the peculiar "mind in the 
man," then you know him and how to take what he 
says. In these earlier Pauline Epistles the primal 
concepts and great substantial verities of Christianity 
are presented less in the form of records and more in 
the wholeness of the thought that lies behind them. 
We may consider, also, that we have in these earlier 
Epistles an inspired estimate as to the meaning of the 
detailed facts which, though not then written out in 
our Gospels, were held in the memory of the early 
disciples and used by the apostolic preachers as they 
wrote and spoke. For what Christ was and what he 
did obviously were matters more important to that 
age, and indeed to any age, than to know simply what 
he said. Plainly, any true interpretation of his words 
must largely depend on what he himself was. 1 Little 

1 "The founding of the kingdom of God was finally accomplished not 
by Christ's teaching as such, but by his personal devotion to his life- 
work, by his death and his resurrection. There must be more than 
teaching; there must be work and deed. Does his teaching thereby sink 
down to a mere introduction to the New Testament revelation? It must 
be said that, little as the teaching in itself apart from the conclusion of 



How Jesus Came to Us. 53 

detail was needed at the outset of the preaching. 
Things at first were not, as Luke says, "set in order." 
Not every intelligent disciple could know all the words 
and deeds to be afterward recorded in the carefully 
collated Gospels which were to be among the authentic 
documents of the new religion. Some single incidents 
in Matthew and John bear marks of having been 
ascertained, not at the outset, but only by comparison 
of evidence made at a time subsequent to their occur- 
rence. To wait for the whole of the circumstances to 
be written out would have been to stop the early mis- 
sionary tours which were of such inestimable worth in 
the great cause of the Master. 

To-day let some man who knows very little about 
his Bible become aware, through great trouble or 
through the inward conviction wrought by God's Holy 
Spirit, of his spiritual need. What will you say to 
him ? Will you begin with him on the first page of the 
Gospels? Will you take some circumstance, of value 
indeed, but not especially needful for his notice at 
that particular time? Not at all. You take the great 
facts of Christ's coming and dying and rising for 
man's salvation. You show him that Christ as Saviour 
and Lord exactly meets those needs that are greatest to 
him in that hour. Just at that point thousands have 
been converted to God. They are in no need of know- 

his life could have called into existence the kingdom of God, as little 
could that ending of his life have called it into being without the fore- 
going doctrinal revelation. His doctrine is not indeed his lifework, but 
its reflection." And he opposes those "who contrast the 'teaching of 
Jesus' as Christianity with the apostolic 'teaching about Christ.' " — New 
Testament Theology, Beyschlag, p. 29. 



54 Advent and Ascension. 

ing. at that time, the story of the feeding the five 
thousand or the narrative of Christ's rejection at 
Nazareth. In the hour of inquiry about salvation men 
need to know only a few gospel facts and promises. 
That was the exact position of those to whom the 
gospel first came. They craved not historical narra- 
tive but spiritual knowledge. The heart in the new 
religion met their hearts. Its Christ became their per- 
sonal Saviour. They knew it, not in a book, but in an 
experience. 

But there would come a time when these converts 
would ask about the life of this Christ before he came 
to the world, and John's Gospel in its opening verses 
would make answer. There would come a time when 
fitly they would ask about his human advent, and they 
would find it described in the two Gospels which 
because of their evident design, would be likely to 
record the virgin birth. And so Paul's phrase, "born 
of a woman." enough for one time, would find its 
complemental statement in the details of Matthew and 
Luke. This is the experiential order rather than the 
historic, and this is the way that most millions receive 
the gospel in conversion. The new heart comes to 
accept a few great Christian facts for its own joy and 
salvation. The historic order of those facts is a matter 
for subsequent study. This experiential approach 
is that of men seeking the truth to-day and of men 
also in Paul's time, as shown by the Acts. The 
Epistles are not to be considered as deductions from 
the Gospels, since the Gospels were not then written : 






How Jesus Came to Us. 55 

but the Gospels are to be considered as filling out, 
in their detail of separate incidents, that which was 
necessarily lacking from the point of view of the 
Epistles. 

And yet, while there is such a grand assertion of a 
comprehensive Christianity in Paul's earlier Epistles, 
whenever occasion requires it he can marshal specific 
details in the life of Jesus. His citation of the facts 
taught "by the revelation of Jesus Christ" in Galatians 1 
and Corinthians 2 is an instance in point. His narration 
of the specific words used at the institution of the 
Lord's Supper 3 is also to be noted. His remarkable 
recognition of the antecedent glory and subsequent 
humiliation of the Lord shows that, if the occasion did 
not demand the detail of the facts, he still had in mind 
the whole matter of the virgin birth: "For our sakes 
he beggared himself, that we through his beggary 
might be enriched." 4 So, too, we have those other 
words : "He, existing in the form of God, did not con- 
sider an equal state with God a thing to be grasped 
and held, but emptied himself and took the form of a 
slave, being made in the likeness of man." 5 These arq 
crucial tests in the discussion of God's revelation in 
Christ. They tell the story of Luther that in the pres- 
ence of the words, "My God, my God, why hast thou 
forsaken me ?" he sat dumb for a long time. He could 
take no food. He was as motionless as a corpse. He 
saw and heard nothing about him. He was entranced 

1 Gal. i, n-24. 2 1 Cor. xv, 3. 3 i Cor. xi, 25-28. 

4 2 Cor. viii, 9. 5 Phil, ii, 6-8. 



56 Advent and Ascension. 

and overpowered by these inexplicable words. Awak- 
ing at length to his normal consciousness, he cried out, 
"Forsaken of God ! Forsaken of God ! Who can un- 
derstand it?" And he ventured on no analysis of the 
strong words. Luther's course in not subjecting the 
agony in the Lord's words to any analysis commends 
itself as wise. And Paul's great words about Christ 
as "beggaring himself" in the Incarnation are quoted, 
not to exhaust them by any explanation, but to show 
that he knew of the virgin birth and so gives world- 
wide testimony to the fact. 

And the other Epistles yield us testimony, both the 
later ones of Paul and those of Peter and John. True, 
the point of vision in the case of Peter and John some- 
what differs from that of Paul. For Paul had no such 
knowledge of Christ before his resurrection as had 
Peter and John. They knew the Lord with a personal 
intimacy in the days of his earthly sojourn, while 
Paul's vision of the Lord Jesus on the way to 
Damascus was the vision of the risen and glorified 
Lord. Hence the larger stress Paul always lays on 
resurrection. But in contrast therewith Peter gives 
us, in his Epistles, the sorrowing, burdened Christ, the 
One "put to death in the flesh." 1 He is the One who 
shed "the precious blood as of a Lamb without 
blemish." 2 He "suffered for us in the flesh." 3 The 
earthly life of the Lord was presented, and believers 
were "partakers of Christ's sufferings." 4 But Paul's 

i i Pet. iii, 18. 2 i Pet. i, 19. 

3 1 Pet. iv, 1. 4 1 Pet. ii, 21. 



How Jesus Came to Us. 57 

gaze was less on the past and more on the future. 
Resurrection for those that "sleep in Christ" is one of 
his favorite themes. And it is the "second Adam, the 
Lord from heaven," 1 who is to bring this about as the 
completion of the work begun when "he was born of 
a woman." 

John, in his Epistles, seems afraid that his insist- 
ence on the divine nature of Christ should be under- 
stood as either a denial or a depreciation of the human 
nature of his Lord. He combats, in the opening words 
of his first letter, the idea, which seems to have come 
in, that Christ had only a phantom body. To meet the 
error, engendered it may be of a misconception of his 
own teaching, he opens his first letter with these words : 
"That which we have seen with our own eyes, and 
our hands have handled, of the Word of life; we 
have seen, and bear witness of that eternal life which 
was with the Father, and was manifested unto us." 2 
Here we have the same conception. The human nature 
is not joined to the divine, nor the divine nature to 
the human, but the divine nature becomes the human 
nature. Here, also, as in Paul and Peter, it is not the 
idea of two natures, the one partially or wholly ab- 
sorbed in the other, but it is the idea of one divine 
Being revealed as man to men. John's words, if not 
deeper than those of Paul and Peter, are more concise. 
They show God manifested as Christ. And this is 
exactly Paul's idea as expressed by the words "God 
manifest in the flesh." In all three apostles this Christ 

1 1 Cor. xv, 45. 2 1 John i, 1-3. 



58 Advent and Ascension. 

is the One with whom Christians had then to do. The 
conception of John in his Epistles, as well as that in 
the minds of his brethren, is that Jesus has taken for 
them the place of God. The humanity of the Incar- 
nate One had been discounted in favor of his divinity, 
which was universally acknowledged. Christ's ante- 
cedence "in the bosom of the Father" 1 must have been 
a difficult article of faith for these Jewish monotheists 
to accept, but their Epistles show a complete surrender 
to the idea. And more : the difficulty inherent in this 
idea to every human mind seems not once, so far as 
any hint is on record, to have been a cause of stumbling 
to them. They reverently took the facts, and were 
less perplexed than worshipful before the mystery of 
God incarnate as the Christ. 

James, the Apostle of the Practical, in his Epistle 
has less to say than the others about the nature of God 
as revealed in Christ. The man, the theme, the occa- 
sion, and the aim so evident in the whole Epistle, will 
account for this peculiarity. But, on the other hand, 
it has been noticed that, since he speaks of "the Lord" 
as one whose "coming draweth nigh," 2 the reference 
must be to "the Lord Jesus Christ." And the concep- 
tion in the whole Epistle is not only that of Christ who 
has come and who will come, but of Christ who, having 
passed through a mortal life, is now living in heaven; 
One whose eye is keen to detect the real character of 
each man and the inner motive in each deed. To 
James the heavenly Christ retains the quick ear and 

1 1 John i, 18. a James v, 7-9. 



How Jesus Came to Us. 59 

the sharp eye, and his approval or disaproval is instant 
for the practical living of each believer. 

Just here a few words may be said about the 
Epistles, taken as a whole, in their treatment of the 
idea of Christ's incarnation. Their tone when they 
refer to this idea is remarkable. They all have a 
peculiar way of conceiving of the relation which Christ 
bore to the Father. There are two distinct points of 
view : that of his personal and that of his official rela- 
tion to God. These writers of the Epistles are not 
unaware of the mystery of the human and the divine, 
but, clearly, the mystery though recognized does not 
perplex. . They accept it, as they go on to describe its 
working in the spectacle of salvation procured for 
man. They use the given fact rather than dissect it. 
They see that in his incarnation he is always one being, 
and yet they also see that some of his acts emphasize 
the human more than the divine, and others of them 
show more of the divine than of the human. It has 
been urged that this could not be if he were one being, 
with a single consciousness. But that matter did not 
trouble these writers of our Epistles. And those who 
urge it to-day confuse two things : the manifestation of 
the Lord, and his essential nature. A manifestation is 
something to be seen. Popularly, indeed, we are wont 
to say that "we see the man in his acts." But do we? 
We see only manifestations of certain qualities, not 
the very selfhood of the man himself. And precisely 
as we see Christ's manifestation in one way in his 
childhood and in another way in manhood, so we see 



60 Advent and Ascension. 

humanity especially displayed in some deeds and 
divinity in others. For purposes of our analysis we 
separate them, assigning, in a general way of speaking, 
one class of things to the one nature only. Here, we 
sometimes say, he is man; there, he is God; and it is 
probably impossible not so to speak. But this is to 
speak in the way of our human apprehension, rather 
than to speak definitely of the essential nature of the 
Lord himself. That words sometimes should be used 
in adaptation to a learner's weakness might be granted. 
They might be justified in the case of an apostle ad- 
dressing his early converts. But such words, if their 
presence in the Epistles should be admitted, would 
not hinder but that, in some crucial passages like those 
elsewhere quoted in this discussion, the writers should 
strike a deeper tone, especially when the theme is the 
real and essential nature of their Lord. And these 
writers are not conscious of any disagreement in their 
two presentations of Jesus, as both human and divine, 
with their idea, so often expressed, that Jesus was a 
single person with an individual consciousness. Their 
incidental allusions to him in all these personal rela- 
tions are very significant. He was "the man Christ 
Jesus." But he was also the preexistent and eternal, 
"God manifested in the flesh." 

And Christ's official relation, as well as his essential 
nature, is clearly taught in the Epistles when the 
writers discourse of the Incarnation, In setting forth 
this official position the various relations of man to 
man are necessarily employed. No one of these can 



How Jesus Came to Us. 6i 

cover the whole ground, can express the whole truth. 
The relation of sovereign to subject is employed by 
these writers. Jesus was thus subject to his Father. 
He himself declared that in this relation his Father 
was greater than himself, and the Epistles represent 
him as coming to do the will of God. He "learned 
obedience." He subjected himself to his God. He 
came "under law." The Incarnation is not conceived 
of by the writers of the Epistles as founded in any 
"monism" in which man and God are one in substance, 
one in nature. For in that case there could be no 
incarnation, no real and actual condescension in God 
becoming man. Nor is there anything to forbid that, 
in this state of condescension, while equal in nature 
with God, he should be conscious that in wearing our 
flesh he was for a time voluntarily acting on a lower 
plane. He was a subject under law to a superior, and 
so could say, "My Father is greater than I." "He 
made himself of no reputation . . . being found in 
fashion as a man." 1 The essential human nature of 
two men shows them equals, but one of them may be 
the sovereign of a vast kingdom and the other the 
sovereign's prime minister — the latter officially lower 
than the other. The Epistles, looking upon Jesus as 
"born of a woman, made under the law," see him at 
his virgin birth as "one sent," and also see him as he 
takes for himself voluntarily an inferior position. 
Appointed to an official place, at the incarnation he is 
saying, "I come to do thy will, O God." But then we 

i Phil, ii, 7. 



62 Advent and Ascension. 

must remember that all such figures drawn from hu- 
man relations are limited in application. They can 
set forth only one aspect. The presentation has in it 
obvious difficulties. It must not be pressed too far. 
It is easy to make it mean too much ; to see it as the 
exclusive method of conceiving of the relation of Jesus 
to God; but within due bounds, and with due respect 
to other ways of setting forth the fact, it does help 
us in getting one side of a vast truth before our minds 
and hearts. 

Looking still further through the Epistles, we find 
the incarnation of Jesus presented in another form. 
Now the comparison is taken from the courts of 
justice. This conception has been called the "forensic 
idea" and sometimes the "judicial idea." It employs 
legal terms. It conceives of man as a sinner, as a 
being who has violated God's law, and of Christ as 
the "righteous Advocate" before God in behalf of 
man. True, the conception came from the Old Tes- 
tament, but Jesus himself took it up and spoke of his 
blood "which is shed for many." And his apostles — all 
of them who have left us any words of their own — 
were persistent in this mode of representation. In 
this aspect of our Lord's official position his incarna- 
tion may be considered less as a preparation for the 
atonement and more as a part of it. The verses in 
which this presentation is found are far too many for 
quotation here. And the relation in itself is too 
obviously true for any to represent it as a peculiarity 
of the mental and educational status of a single apostle. 



How Jesus Came to Us. 63 

But in this comparison, drawn from legal affairs, as in 
that derived from the relation of sovereign and subject, 
only a part of the relation in which Jesus stood to God 
can be set forth. It is merely an approximation; an 
attempt, so far as a comparison with something 
familiar in common life will do it, to get on toward a 
better understanding of the official relation of the 
Christ to Him who sent this Christ into the world by 
the way of the birth at the manger. An illustration 
largely helpful up to a certain point, the analogy must 
not be pressed too far. 

It is the same with the filial relation. Jesus had 
found in the Old Testament the word "Father" applied 
to God. It did not express essential being. It did not 
define an attribute. It did not declare a perfection. 
It was a happy figure drawn from the relation of 
parent and child, and it set forth, by the most precious 
of all possible terms, the filial aspect of Jesus toward 
the God whom he delighted to call "the Father." This 
was his dearest name for God ; and "the Son" was his 
dearest name for himself. It came closest to the 
heart. It involved so much else that the Epistles take 
it up and sometimes introduce their message by refer- 
ences to "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus 
Christ." There are those who make this comparison, 
derived from the paternal and filial relation, the whole 
setting forth alike of God before and in and after the 
Incarnation. They ask nothing more; forgetful that 
a figure drawn from any earthly relationship can never 
be a final definition, but must always remain a vivid 



64 Advent and Ascension. 

and blessed description; a description immeasurably 
significant. To those men writing the Epistles, the 
divine Sonship stood in the divine Fatherhood. Incar- 
nation was the only way in which the Fatherhood 
could be presented as a concrete fact. God could be a 
Father if Jesus was a Son — an Only Begotten Son. 
Not that this conception annihilated the parallel con- 
ceptions of God as Creator, Sovereign, and final Judge ; 
but it was, together with them, one way of apprehend- 
ing God, and it was a way that took hold of the hearts 
of men. Of course, like the other presentations, this 
mode had its limitations. It could be pressed unduly 
and made an excuse for human presumption in con- 
tinuous sin, but held as these apostles held it, it was 
not only a comfort and a joy but a very rapture. Their 
words of exultation ring out in the ears of the whole 
world. God is the Father because Jesus is the Son. 

And there is yet another comparison taken up and 
worked out by these men — that of vitality. The branch 
is in the vine, the vine is in the root. Jesus himself had 
used the figure of the vine and the branches. And 
the Epistles work strongly that preposition "in" which 
the Master's word must have taught the disciples. They 
were in him, and he in turn was in God. There was 
the oneness of the divine and the human will between 
the Lord and the disciples. But these men were saved 
from all pantheism here by the Incarnation. Unity of 
purpose was not necessarily unity of nature. But over 
and over again where you expect these Epistles to say 
"God" you find them using the name "Christ." It is 



How Jesus Came to Us. 65 

the principle of vitality. Their own inner feeling un- 
der the guidance of the Holy Spirit seems to have led 
them to use any and every analogy in nature, in provi- 
dence, in social, in business, and in political life, to 
set forth some phase of the relation that, when they 
had done their all, no words were competent to ex- 
press. And, moreover, the Incarnation made all things 
new, and so they in turn illustrated the ever-living fact. 
All life was seen to mean more because a new life had 
come into the world. Each birth suggested the birth 
at the manger. Each life might be lived in a new way 
since the Incarnate One had entered into the life of 
our enlarged humanity. "In him was life," and by 
him all things were seen to "consist." His life and 
death and his return at the resurrection were not 
barren historic facts ; for there was in the Incarnation 
a certain potency to impart a peculiar spiritual vitality, 
alike to the writers and readers of these Epistles. 

4. We come now to the testimony of the Gospels. In 
our four evangelists we have unique sketches of the 
incarnate Christ. They give us something better than 
biography. A great Greek scholar has said that, if a 
daily newspaper, with its sketches of passing events 
and personages, had been published at Athens in the 
palmy days of that city, he would give more for one 
number of that paper than for all that has ever been 
written upon the social and domestic, the literary and 
religious life of the men then living. These four evan- 
gelists furnish us with scenes in Christ's life such as we 
could never have had from any studied and careful 
5 



66 Advent and Ascension. 

biography. They show the Incarnation as a daily fact. 
The simple unstudied narration of event after event, 
involving sometimes the human, sometimes the divine, 
and sometimes a strange mingling of the two in what 
was evidently the one consciousness of Jesus, is the 
thing at which men never cease to wonder in all the 
successive generations. 

As to their value as witnesses, one has only to submit 
himself to the charm of their story to feel that these 
men are transparently truthful. The sunshine is the 
best evidence of the existence of the sun. Such men 
can best answer the questions converts would soon 
come to ask about the circumstances of our Lord's 
birth. 

In two of our Gospels the unique story of the virgin 
birth is given us; in one of them, that of Luke, the 
detailed circumstances cover two chapters. Now and 
then some one is found who hesitates to accept these 
chapters, though admitting all the rest of the Lord's 
life to be miraculous. But any incarnation carries with 
it the miraculous at its beginning, as well as at the 
middle and at the end. And there are especial confir- 
mations of these two chapters which record not only 
the birth but the angelic appearances and the signifi- 
cantly peculiar utterances of Mary and Elisabeth, and 
give the whole historic setting. They locate, so to say, 
the whole matter, giving date and political environ- 
ment. These chapters cannot be additions made in or 
before the second century to the original document; 
for the style, not only of language but of thought in 



How Jesus Came to Us. 67 

those centuries, has come down to us in certain 
forgeries known as "apocryphal gospels," and their 
frivolous tone in describing the advent is an instant 
confutation of their claim, to anyone to-day who be- 
lieves in our Gospels. The existence of such writings 
shows how impossible it was to add to the original 
documents any considerable statement, much less two 
whole chapters, on so important a matter. 

In reference to the literary agreement of these two 
chapters with the rest of Luke's Gospel, an agreement 
that takes in the use not only of nouns but of verbs and 
adverbs set in a distinctive phraseology, Professor 
Sanday has shown, in his Gospels of the Second Cen- 
tury, that the argument for the genuineness of the first 
two chapters is sustained. There is a remarkable use 
of the similar words and phrases. He says, "In the 
principal omission — that of the first two chapters — 
containing 132 verses — there are forty-seven distinct 
peculiarities of style (that is, peculiarities characteristic 
of the Gospel of Luke generally) with 105 instances; 
and eighty-two characteristic words with 144 in- 
stances." But the tone of the chapters is as remarkable 
as is their literary significance. Had there been addi- 
tions from subsequent centuries there would have been 
reference to the glory of this newborn Christ. The 
Christian exultation of the second or the subsequent 
centuries would have been infused into the words of 
Mary and of Elisabeth, of the angel and of Zacharias 
and Simeon. Instead of this they are all Jewish words 
of a time on which the light of Christianity had not 



68 Advent and Ascension. 

shined. The phrase, "Make ready a people prepared 
for him," is in the Jewish tone. Mary's great song 
is as distinctly Jewish; never passing beyond the old 
horizon into the sphere of Christ's glory as we find it 
described in the apostolic Epistles. Each prophecy of 
Zacharias, of Mary, and of Elisabeth is that of those 
standing within the old bounds and looking forward 
out of them into a time not yet come. There is no 
glow, as in the subsequent days ; no sense of the pres- 
ent glory as it would have been seen by any Christian 
writer of the second century. They are, as we should 
expect if genuine, and as would be impossible in any 
second-century interpolation, the words of devout Jews 
standing on the dividing line of the two dispensations. 
The new mode of thinking and the new forms of 
utterance are wanting. The tone befits the time, the 
persons, the circumstances, and the occasion. Each 
one says and does what now we can see was the thing 
to have been said and done. There is no trace of 
devout second-century imagination expressing itself 
in the form of legends such as then existed. The 
story in Luke in its detail, and in Matthew in its con- 
ciseness, bears every mark of historicity. 

And if given in two of our Gospels and omitted in 
two of them — this is exactly what might be expected. 
No shadow of doubt is cast upon the fact itself by 
these two omissions when we recall, what is evident to 
every reader, that no one of the Gospels undertakes to 
be a biography. They are sketches only, though with 
some little and general chronological order, and that 



How Jesus Came to Us. 69 

little attempt at order is always subservient to the 
special and definite design of the writer, each one hav- 
ing his own distinct purpose and selecting from the 
mass of material those events which would suit his 
special object in writing. Each of them writes without 
regard to the others. Luke has no wish to make his 
sketch harmonious with that of Mark or Matthew. 
Each omits or enlarges exactly as suits his especial 
aim and does his work of compiling in his own way. 

If now we recall the obvious purpose of each of the 
four evangelists in writing his Gospel, we see at once 
why two of them record and why two of them omit 
the story of the virgin birth. The two omit it who, as 
we know their aim in writing, would be expected to do 
so, and it is clear why the others record it, why each 
of the two records it in his own way, and why the 
story at this point is narrowed in the one and at that 
point is broadened in the other Gospel. That these 
two men, by all means the two most intellectual and 
best trained of the evangelists, finding themselves so 
situated as best to know the details of the birth, should 
search out the special facts and so should make special 
record of them, is an exceedingly important fact when 
we consider the testimony they give. One of them, 
Matthew, writes for the Jewish world, to show the 
royalty of the Lord; the other, Luke, writes for the 
Gentile world, that all the nations may see how God 
has revealed a Saviour for the race. And the wisdom 
is likewise manifest that continued, through Luke, in 
the book we call "The Acts of the Apostles," the clear 



Jo Advent and Ascension. 

story of "the Lord the Christ" who was manifested 
after his ascension as "the Lord the Spirit." The 
Spirit was to "guide them into all truth." And if any 
hidden incident needed to be disclosed and recorded, 
and if no diligence of theirs could recover it from its 
obscurity, the promised Holy Spirit was their aid. He 
could not only recall to them whatsoever they had for- 
gotten, but he could reveal to them facts they could not 
know of themselves. Thus these men were equipped 
as witnesses for God and his Christ, and this divine 
guidance, working through each man's freedom in the 
selection of materials and style of composition, has 
brought about a singular harmony in their work. The 
undesigned coincidences are a striking confirmation of 
their accuracy, while their differences are just those 
that honest witnesses, intent on testifying to what they 
personally noticed, are sure to exhibit. Like the 
pictures of the stereoscope, taken at different angles 
but seen as blended into one, these narrations show a 
unity far exceeding that of mere words. It is one 
Person whom they show at the manger, at the sep- 
ulcher, and at every intermediate point in the Lord's 
career. 

It has been objected that we have no direct testi- 
mony from the less conspicuous members of the apos- 
tolic band. But the fact that we have no adverse 
testimony from them shows, under the circumstances, 
at least their acquiescence in the statements "commonly 
believed;" their agreement with the vast mass of the 
testimony of the earliest believers as to the Christian 



How Jesus Came to Us. 71 

facts. Then, too, while we have no writings directly- 
ascribed to these less known men, is it not highly prob- 
able that the compilers of our Christian documents 
quoted freely from the oral gospels of their brethren ; 
perhaps, also, from the screeds originally furnished to 
those who wrote our Gospels and Epistles? It is 
certainly easier and more natural to account in this 
way for the abrupt transitions and fragmentary para- 
graphs that are found in our Gospels than to suppose, 
as some have done, a full logia, a lost gospel, which 
Matthew and Mark and even John used as the common 
basis of their narrations. If this view is accepted, then 
we can claim the testimony of the less conspicuous of 
the apostles to the whole story of Christ's life as given 
by those who were called to "set in order the things 
commonly believed" by the early disciples. What need 
of their attempting the work of furnishing other 
gospels when all they would say was better said by 
those who were called by their own genius and by the 
Holy Spirit to do this very thing? If their testimony 
is already incorporated in the Gospels and Epistles we 
can ask no more. 

Of the capacity as well as the integrity of Matthew 
in setting forth the royal aspect of his Lord's life 
nothing further needs to be said than that these are 
equaled by Luke in his peculiar presentation of Christ 
as the world's Saviour, with a gospel for universal 
humanity. Gentile and Jew are one for Luke. His 
view is that Christ descended not only from David and 
Abraham but from "Adam, who was the son of God," 



J2 Advent and Ascension.. 

And the crisp, graphic story of Mark, dealing largely 
with the outer life of the Lord, is well set over against 
the peculiarly spiritual view of John, the disciple whom 
Jesus loved, who had lain on his bosom and felt the 
inner throb of his heart. And so, considering the aim 
of each evangelist, we see why he dwells as he does 
on this or the other fact, and equally why he passes 
lightly over this or the other event, or omits it alto- 
gether. The very omissions show the consistency of 
each writer in carrying out his one distinct purpose. 

Moreover, the doctrinal form of these facts as given 
by our New Testament writers is very significant. 
They use them not only by way of narration but of 
moral explanation. And this use of them is an indirect 
testimony not only to the reality of the facts but to 
the integrity of the writers. The merely narrative 
statement gives the bare fact. The doctrinal state- 
ment goes on, beyond the fact, to its relations. The 
one sees a star outside of all other stars; the other 
sees the star as none the less a star because included in 
the whole system of astronomy. 

The evangelists are not usually classed as doctrinal 
teachers, and yet, though their usual method is narra- 
tion, the Gospels abound in doctrine. Jesus, accord- 
ing to them, spoke of his "doctrine." The men he met 
were doctrinal in their training, in their temper of 
mind, and even in their forms of speech. "They were 
astonished at his doctrine." By that standard they 
judged him, and with reference to that standard in 
their minds he constantly addressed them. He could 



How Jesus Came to Us. 73 

be understood by them only by adapting himself in 
some degree to their literary method. They had their 
doctrine, more or less to be corrected by him, of God 
and of the Messiah, their doctrine of the Forerunner 
as Elias, their doctrine of a resurrection and a future 
life, their doctrine of angels and of demons, their doc- 
trine of a judgment and of eternal awards. And even 
in the final trial of Jesus he was asked of his "doc- 
trine." The evangelists, who never stop to utter excla- 
mations of wonder at the strange events of our Lord's 
life, do sometimes pause a moment to tell us that our 
Lord's statements in given cases were caused by the 
wrong doctrine which was taught by his opponents. 
He would set them right in their doctrinal belief. He 
corrects their doctrines of the Sabbath, of divorce, of 
the resurrection, and the judgment. Neither did he in 
his words or the evangelists in their record ever cast 
any slur on doctrine as doctrine — as though it were of 
no importance what men believed if their conduct were 
only right. He traced "right doing," in any full sense 
of that phrase, to the truth, in which alone stands 
human duty. His severest words were for the blast- 
ing of those who neglected truth and overlooked that 
inward spiritual conviction which only the truth firmly 
believed could evoke in their souls — the men who 
cared only for "the outside of the cup and the platter." 
He insisted that he "came out from the Father" and 
that God's testimony to him should be received and 
believed. His doctrine of himself he made so con- 
spicuous that the men who wanted to be religious only 



74 Advent and Ascension. 

in general, and without actual and obedient faith in 
himself, "went away" murmuring, "This is a hard 
saying; who can hear it?" It was his "doctrine" that 
caused the disturbance at the synagogue at Nazareth, 
the rejection at Capernaum, and the crucifixion at 
Jerusalem. His teaching, not his miracles, not his 
blameless conduct, stirred the wrath of those who 
hunted him to the death. High priest and Pilate and 
Herod all inquired in his last days on earth about "his 
doctrine." By asserting, as some would have had him 
do, that "doctrine is nothing and life is all," he could 
easily have placated his enemies and escaped his death. 
He claimed to have come from heaven, as John has 
recorded in his opening chapter. He claimed to be 
"one with the Father;" and he so exhibited himself 
to the astonished disciples at the Transfiguration. He 
said he should "rise from the dead," and he did it. He 
emphasized the great facts of his own career, making 
them not unconnected events but parts of "the faith," 
thus compelling, in all believers, some form of doctrinal 
statement. 

And there is a peculiar form of witness borne to 
these facts of the Incarnation in these later centuries. 
The facts are reflected in the experiences of the soul. 
There is spiritual correspondence to the historical 
events which constitute an incarnation. The brain is 
not the only thing to be satisfied, the heart has also its 
demands. There is a spiritual logic. There is a vital 
eye for the spirit's vision. The soul is the sensitive 
plate on which the sunlight writes the exact image of 



How Jesus Came to Us. 75 

the object toward which the camera is directed. The 
conception of God incarnate in Jesus Christ so supplies 
the deepest want that such men cry out, "To whom else 
shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life." If 
you could make the flowers of summer testify, they 
would bear witness that their colors were just so much 
concentrated sunlight. You can look at them and see 
the spectrum of the sun. Every beauty they exhibit is 
from the orb of day. They are more than mirrors, 
for they retain as well as reflect the light of the sun. 
Some of these Christians are not trained in formal 
logic to defend therewith their faith in the Incarnation, 
but they have the surer logic of the soul. Their Christ 
is "Immanuel, God with us," as a common experience 
in life. The impression comes in upon them with a 
singularly convincing power, as they study the birth 
and life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, 
that these things are so. This Christ has wrought a 
great transformation in them. The inward evidence 
is so strong that they cannot forbear giving their tes- 
timony to the world. The flower testifies to the sun 
from which came all its beauty. The mirror testifies 
to "the face of Jesus Christ." The eye, made vital and 
sympathetic, sees a Christ in these New Testament 
pages who must have existed in order to be depicted. 
Take these wonderfully conspiring circumstances in 
the happy unity of their divinely human comprehen- 
siveness as they are given in Gospel and Epistles, and 
how surely they carry with them to prepared souls a 
singularly self-evidencing power! A little child is 



J6 Advent and Ascension. 

born out of the heart of a mother who had been pre- 
pared for that birth by expectations peculiarly war- 
ranted. Angel faces look down out of heaven upon 
that scene. Shepherds see on that night an unwonted 
glory on all the world and in the sky, and hear snatches 
of a celestial song that sings of a reunion of earth and 
heaven. Strangers from far-away lands, led by divine 
guidance, through their accustomed siderial study, seek 
the place of that birth. There is the simplicity of the 
manger over against the craft of a king's cruel 
mandate. There is the sweet confidence of the mother, 
and the strong belief in her by him who assumed the 
place of her protector, and so found his confidence in 
God confirmed. In telling the story, the evangelists 
attempt no highly wrought description. All has the 
simplicity and naturalness of the scene itself. The 
story is told easily, credibly, and lovingly. It delights 
youth and instructs age. The picture has one tone, 
with no suggestion of a single discordant element. It 
fits the world's expectation, as well as the world's 
want, and so it is believable. More and more study 
makes it at once a necessity and a certainty. It ought 
to be true, and so the swift logic of the satisfied heart 
rests in it. Its homeliness alike of incident and record, 
its artlessness, its suggestiveness, carry with them a 
kind of moral conviction which adds to the historic 
proofs. And the fact in its historic form admits, nay, 
demands, the widest interpretation. It is the section 
of a circle which includes in its vast sweep the whole 
circumference of spiritual truth. For, see: this truth 



How Jesus Came to Us. 77 

occurs amid surroundings so indicative of the common 
course of human life that all natural things are lifted 
into a new spiritual meaning, and the round world is 
another place since Christ came into it. Over these 
secular things there is thrown a sacred glory and all 
common circumstances have an uncommon meaning. 
The Christ has come among them, and they are all 
glorified by him who came not to the highest status of 
court or temple but to the sphere of humble life and 
lived amid the lowliest things. Nothing is mean any 
more, or ordinary, useless or hopeless. He who hon- 
ored social life by his miracle at Cana has sanctified 
childhood in its earliest helplessness, even when its 
untoward surroundings are so lowly as that manger at 
Bethlehem. And thus commonest persons and lowliest 
places and most obscure positions are such only in out- 
ward form and never in inward meaning. Loneliness 
is only outward, for God came once and was "Im- 
manuel, God with us." And he came to show that be- 
hind all physical condition there is a moral condition 
that, using each physical thing rightly, makes it a part 
of the moral order of the world and gets for it a place 
in the kingdom Christ came to establish. If a manger 
can be so noble what may not any spot become ? And 
thus Christ in that manger, with shepherds represent- 
ing one section of our mortal life, and with astron- 
omers representing another, and with angels over all 
rejoicing in the highest glory now to come to men, and 
in the peace to each believing soul, and by and by to 
the whole believing world — this is a precious segment 



78 Advent and Ascension. 

of the moral fact symbolized by the historic fact at 
Bethlehem. But that historic picture, divinely set forth 
and standing out in perfect beauty on the historic 
page, could never have been so depicted but that the 
facts had so occurred. Seen, it convinces. It is so true, 
that once true, it can never be true again. There need 
not be, and so cannot be, another such birth. This 
Incarnation fills up the full measure. There is nothing 
over and beyond. All possibility is exhausted in the 
one certainty. Itself is its own evidence to the men 
who are morally sympathetic in all ages. 

It is also especially worthy of our notice that the 
men who bear written witness, whether in Old Testa- 
ment or in New Testament times, all are Hebrews, and 
so their testimony has additional value for the wide 
world. 1 The Hebrew alone had kept in fair purity the 

1 Strangely enough, the fact that the writers of the four Gospels were 
all Hebrews has been urged as an objection — as if Hebrews then living 
in Palestine were not the very persons who should be the best witnesses. 
But immediately after them the men who vouch for the existence, 
integrity, authenticity, and inspiration of the four Gospels are Gentiles. 
The first one hundred and eighty years of the Christian era are swept 
by the testimony of Irenaeus, who gives not only his own belief but that 
of the Christian churches before his own day. He had known, inti- 
mately, Polycarp, who had kept close company with the apostle John 
and had testified to John's story of what Jesus did and said, and the 
story of others "who had seen the Lord." He distinctly remembered 
the incidents of Polycarp's time, and how Polycarp would describe his 
intercourse with John and his familiarity with those who had seen the 
Lord, and how he would relate their words. And whatsoever he had 
heard from them about the Lord and about his miracles and about his 
teachings Polycarp, as having received from eyewitnesses the life of 
the Word, would relate altogether in accordance with the Scriptures. 
(See Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, book v, 20.) 

Irenaeus uses our four Gospels as freely and fully and reverently, 
quoting them for authoritative statement, as do the most careful theo- 
logians of to-day. He quotes by name the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, 
Luke, and John, and then says of them: "So firm is the ground on 
which these Gospels rest that the very heretics themselves bear witness 
to them [that is, their existence], and starting from these each one of 
them endeavors to establish his own peculiar doctrine" (Ante-Nicene 



How Jesus Came to Us. 79 

primal idea of the one true and living God. God had 
been no mere tribal divinity, for he had been worshiped 
before the sons of Jacob had been the fathers of the 
Hebrew tribes. This idea of the one God had taken 
on constantly increasing clarity, had been steadily 
gaining in moral qualities through prophetic rites and 
prophetic men. Those grand old prophets were men 
to whom, in addition to their natural genius for re- 
ligion, there had been given a divine inspiration for 
guidance and elevation and foresight. Sometimes they 
did not understand the full meaning of their own 
words, speaking better than they knew. 1 They saw 
nearest things of national history, but they had also 
the vital eye and the glance onward to the farthest 
things of the kingdom of God. Their divine inspira- 
tion no more changed their style of composition than 
it changed the features of their faces. Their patriotism 
was lifted sometimes into a religion ; and in describing 
the "Hope of Israel" they saw him as also the "Hope 
of the Gentiles." Each man used his own faculties at 
their utmost and in his own peculiar way; so that we 

Library , vol. i, pp. 292, 293). It is to be noted that he is speaking for 
all the churches in Asia Minor, where he was born and had exercised 
his ministry, and also for the church at Rome he had first visited, as 
well as for those in southern Gaul where he was writing. It is not 
questioned that all these Gentile churches held to the historicity of our 
four Gospels. Subsequently, in the fourth century, because it stood in 
the way of their views about Christ's person and work, an heretical 
sect held that John's Gospel was later. 

It could hardly be expected that Jewish writers contemporary with 
our evangelists should give testimony to Christ. Even if the famous 
passage in Josephus were genuine it would be but a single item of 
testimony from one who, as a Jew, would say as little as possible, since 
his peculiar national prejudices are evident on every page. And he is 
the only Jewish writer of that time whose works have come down to us. 

1 1 Pet. i, 11. 



80 Advent and Ascension. 

have the happy variety of historic writing, legal record, 
wisdom literature, psalm of devotion, proverb of prac- 
tical life, homely sketch, brotherly letter, and apoca- 
lyptic vision ; thus providing for an age, now upon the 
world, when the religion that is founded on authentic 
documents, which can endure critical investigation 
and so furnish direct proof of historic fact, is the only 
religion that can make serious claim on thoughtful 
men. 

In the case of the New Testament writers there were 
special circumstances that confirm our trust in their 
accuracy. The age when Jesus appeared, so far from 
being credulous, was especially skeptical. This fact, 
admitted by all as to the general Roman world, had 
come to be partially true inside the Jewish nation. Its 
largest sect was that of the Sadducees, who denied 
that there was direct proof of angel or spirit. They 
were the moralists of a narrow and materialistic creed. 
The Hebrew still boasted of an ancestry great in its 
faith in the one God, but the venerated tradition was 
no more a stimulus to the active virtues which had 
made that ancestry so conspicuous. And the whole 
nation was religious more by rote and rule than by 
spirit and life. Hitherto the eras of miracle had not 
been those of the strongest faith, but of the weakest; 
for the times of strongest faith had not needed them. 
But at an era when piety had become mainly a creed 
and chiefly a form, when for centuries even prophecy 
had ceased, and while the general belief in God had 
not waned, yet the ideals of virtue had become only 



How Jesus Came to Us. 8i 

traditional — at such an age the new miracle of all 
miracles, the advent of the incarnate Son, was the 
especial need of the nation. The general correctness 
of creed as to God had kept evermore before their 
minds one other belief warranted by their sacred writ- 
ings, which they had ascribed to* God's own inspiration. 
It was the expectation of a Messiah. But they had 
debased the idea. The political leader who should 
head a revolt against the Roman power and secure 
universal national dominion for the Jewish nation was 
their conception of the Christ. Such a kind of Christ 
as was Jesus had never been imagined. The spiritual 
King of a spiritual kingdom was utterly foreign to all 
their ideas. And even the chosen twelve were con- 
tinually, during Christ's ministry, falling back to this 
crass conception ; a conception that has had a strange 
persistence in the Christian centuries. The need, there- 
fore, of a special divine gift of the Holy Spirit was 
manifest to let the disciples into the meaning of the 
facts they had seen, and equally, to enable them so to 
select out of their material the facts and so to describe 
them as not to misrepresent the fundamental idea of 
Christ and his teaching in their written Gospels. When 
one sees in Browning's "The Ring and the Book," in 
how many different ways, each leaving a different 
moral impression, the same story may be honestly told, 
it is clear that to leave each evangelist to an uninspired 
narration of the story of Christ's life were almost as 
sad as never to have a Christ come to the world. If it 
were worth while to send him it were worth while to 
6 



82 Advent and Ascension. 

send the Holy Spirit to those who were chosen of God 
to report him. Their conception of him was neces- 
sarily mistaken, apart from divine help. The kind of 
Christ they would have described would not have been 
the Christ himself. They had expected a Christ, but 
not the Christ. But their idea corrected by his idea 
changed all, and they became the best possible wit- 
nesses to the Incarnation. 

And these witnesses who gave us the New Testa- 
ment Christ, gave us the individualism of the Christ 
and his teaching of the individualism of each man in 
religion. Trained in the sociology of the old dispen- 
sation, which had nearly lost sight of individualism, 
they cared passionately, with all the Jews of their time, 
not for "the man" but for "the law" and for their own 
"Israel." The collective national life, in its well-being 
and its worship, was the idea of the time. "Salvation 
was of the Jews." God had indeed instituted a 
"peculiar people" who were to maintain, as a people, 
his public worship. Sociology was to have its best 
opportunity, and was to fail in everything except in 
preparing the way by that failure for the new indi- 
vidualism. Yet these men, incapable of originating or 
even imagining such a complete reversal of religious 
conception, when they came under the influence of 
Jesus and felt his power as a personal presence on 
their minds and hearts, could in some degree appreciate 
the new status of the individual. The individual 
Christ spoke to the individual man. He named "the 
Church" but once, and then in an anticipatory way. 



How Jesus Came to Us. 83 

He himself, while living, formed no organization. He 
did not know Jew as Jew or Roman as Roman. He 
only knew the man as a man. The change in concep- 
tion was immense. These disciples, after the Lord 
left the earth, are found carrying out practically a 
conception they could never have originated. Strangely 
changed they had become by contact with his unique 
personality, and by his idea of the personality of every 
man of the race. Only in this way could they have 
been prepared to be his witnesses in word and in deed, 
in public address and in official document. 

Further: if these men before their contact with 
Jesus had had any idea of a universal religion it was 
an exceedingly erroneous one. They may have held, 
with the best Jewish interpreters of their time, that 
the references to the Gentiles in their Scriptures, 
meant that all Gentiles were to become Jews. But 
our Lord's doctrine, of individuality rather than nation- 
ality in religion, lifted all their conceptions so that, 
with Paul, they would not know even Christ him- 
self "after the flesh" as a Jew. They saw that 
this one great fact of each man dignified with the 
opportunity to work out his own personal salvation 
through this personal Christ, was a solar fact that 
"lighteth every man that cometh into the world." The 
new faith made no war on the old distinction. It 
simply superseded it by a higher truth of an individual 
relation of each man in the race to God in this Christ. 
And this idea became a determinative one in Gospel 
and Epistle as these were written. Men bred ex- 



84 Advent and Ascension. 

clusively as Gentiles could not have understood the 
Jewish point of view. Paul, bred a Jew but taught in 
Gentile lore, could come the nearest to apprehending 
the peculiar position. Possibly, in some degree, his 
broad culture prepared him for a broader conception. 
But it looks as if his Gentile education had not broad- 
ened him until after he had met Christ and taken in the 
peculiar idea of Christ's mission to the individual man. 
So Peter, standing behind Mark in the latter's Gospel 
to the Roman world, show's that he has been broadened 
enough, by contact with outside thought, to be able to 
appreciate the standpoint from whieh Roman thought 
would look upon the Christ whose life he was to de- 
scribe. But this broadening of Paul and Peter and of 
the other disciples was not by the way of a comparison, 
in which the best in heathenism was recognized, but 
the rather by way of contrast. Their idea of "com- 
parative religion" found nothing in the outside beliefs 
but antagonism to their own faith in the One Ever- 
living God. There could be nothing good in any belief 
that denied God, the Source of all goodness. But the 
new breadth of these men was due to their reception 
in mind and heart of Christ's doctrine of individualism. 
This completely changed their point of view. This put 
them into the sympathy with him which was required 
in order to make them true witnesses to the Lord 
Jesus and to the fundamental idea of his teachings. 

Thus the way was opened for them to see the divine 
helpfulness to men through sacrifice, and to enter into 
the spirit of it. Not that they were to make again "the 



How Jesus Came to Us. 85 

eternal redemption for us," in which Christ "offered 
himself to God/' "an offering once for all;" but the 
spirit of self-sacrifice for others' good was to be seen 
in Christ, and the fascination of "caring for the other 
man" was to be felt by them. It was to throb in their 
oral teachings and in their careful records. Only by 
this new spirit of human helpfulness begotten in their 
hearts could they become true witnesses of the divine 
helpfulness shown in the Incarnation. And all these 
preparations converged in their work as these New 
Testament writers depicted the incarnate life of our 
Lord, from its beginning to its close, in Gospel and in 
Epistle. The miracle of miracles was the Christ him- 
self; but next in order was the miracle of any fair 
depicting of that life in its relations to God and to man. 
We can recall the fact that literary artists have made 
sad work in modern times as they have attempted, even 
on the grand basis of the four Gospels, to construct a 
"Life of Jesus." Think of Strauss writing such a life 
and omitting or adding according to his own wish or 
whim; of Renan, who called his French novel a life 
of Christ ; of a recent literary woman who gives us in 
our Lord the feminine in place of the masculine 
virtues; of even a Fleetwood, who presents to us a 
devotional Christ only; and of a host of others who 
err either on the side of making him a man and ignor- 
ing his divinity, or else of claiming his divinity and 
ignoring his humanity. And all this shows how deli- 
cate and difficult was the task set before the New Tes- 
tament writers. These witnesses err on neither side. 



86 Advent and Ascension. 

He never is presented, when doing his most marvelous 
works, as acting out of character for him, nor when 
doing the common acts of a man as smirching his 
divine purity. Nowhere is he monstrous, nowhere 
absurd, nowhere at fault. His life proceeds, but it is 
no process in which he clears himself by degrees from 
human fraility. He grows out of himself, like an 
expanding flower. He makes his own impression, and 
it is unlike that of any other man who has ever lived. 
His utterances are simple in their nearest, but profound 
in their far-away meaning. They are not the careful 
results of long processes of thought or long years of 
study. They spring spontaneously from his lips. They 
never smell of the lamp. They are divinely natural 
for him. He is formed on no human ideal, certainly 
not on any Greek model, nor on the accepted Hebrew 
model of his day. Men have tried to invent "the model 
man ;" but even at the hands of a Plato the failure is 
universally admitted. The model man cannot be in- 
vented ; he must have lived, and he could only be 
described by men chosen and prepared and inspired of 
God as "witnesses of these things." 



How Jesus Came to Us. 87 



CHAPTER III. 
The Testimony of the Witnesses. 

In the opening chapter we considered the questions 
involved in an incarnation, and in the succeeding chap- 
ter the witnesses, their credibility, and the general 
scope of their testimony were discussed. It remains 
to examine specifically the testimony they offer. 

Some years ago the writer of these pages went to 
see the sculptor Powers at his studio in Florence. As 
our party approached his rooms we had some idea, 
not necessarily very definite, about the objects one 
would be likely to find in a building where a noble 
artist had for years done work so praised by all the 
world. We thought of chisel and mallet and of 
molds and casts in plaster; of the various things 
necessary to the prosecution of the great art of the 
great artist. In the very idea of such work there were 
certain things essential to such a place and belonging 
naturally to such an art. Presently, on entering the 
workroom, we found the genial artist, mallet in hand 
and cap on head, in the act of directing his assistants. 
A statue in marble was under way, in which a plaster 
model was followed closely. The artist explained his 
work. Just enough was exhibited in the marble to 
enable us to see the conception. The marble was 
designed to belie its silence and to speak a truth in 



88 Advent and Ascension. 

the face of the whole world. Here and there a touch 
of the artist's own hand had finished a detail. Years 
afterward that statue, "Lincoln Freeing the Slave," 
came to America, and then the completed work, not a 
single detail wanting, became a joy to all who saw it. 
A friend looking upon it said, "Studio first, conception 
next, and last of all the finished statue." 

So it is here in the study before us. The questions 
necessarily involved in an incarnation, the broad, 
strong conception as shown in the first Epistles and 
in the responsive faith of the earliest Christians before 
the Gospels were written out ; and then, last of all, the 
careful details of the evangelists supplemented by the 
later Epistles and the Apocalypse — these given us, the 
whole finished work stands before us for our wonder 
and our joy. 

But before examining, with what of care we are able, 
the detailed account of the evangelists, we may fitly 
recall the fact that the writers of the Epistles are 
thoroughly acquainted with the story of the Incarna- 
tion, taken as a whole, and that they give us more 
single events about the beginning and progress and 
ending of the earthly life of our Lord than we might 
have expected when we consider their position and 
their object in writing. Of course the form of their 
statement is not the narrative form, and only inci- 
dentally are their words definitive. Paul, though not 
alone in this method of bearing witness, may be con- 
sidered, because of his more extended writings, as 
leading the others in this definiteness of allusion. 



How Jesus Came to Us. 89 

In a previous chapter, on the "Witnesses to the In- 
carnation," Paul was cited as one who claimed in some 
things to be a witness, and incidentally several of his 
more direct statements were given. 1 He claims for 
himself, and continually claims for those to whom he 
is writing, a certain amount of knowledge. He knew 
and they knew of the "oral gospels :" the gospel story 
told by word of mouth — the method of his time, the 
method by which some of the foremost literature of 
these ages has come down to us. He is constantly 
using such phrases as "we know," phrases which not 
only imply but assume and assert the historic facts of 
the beginning and progress and closing of our Lord's 
earthly career. He had gone up to Jerusalem "to see 
Peter, and abode with him" and possibly James for 
those memorable "fifteen days," as he says in his 
Epistle to the Galatians. The historical facts, in their 
factual form rather than their doctrinal, would cer- 
tainly be gone over very carefully by them. He, of 
all men, would seek the historic basis on which every- 
thing depended. His careful training made him the 
man of all men to examine the whole thing. Enough 
time had elapsed for dispassionate study of the matter, 
but not enough to permit the least myth to gather 
about the original facts. Such a man's testimony 
under such circumstances leaves no more to be desired. 
Let it be carefully borne in mind, however, that he 
does not write as an historian, nor is he composing 
treatises. He is writing "letters" to brother Chris- 

1 See page 59. 



90 Advent and Ascension. 

tians who know the gospel facts as well as he himself. 
They are in no need that he should rehearse them, but 
only that he should use these accepted facts for their 
spiritual and ethical profit. When we put ourselves in 
his place, and that of those to whom he is writing, we 
may well be surprised that he uses so many of them. 
He names the beginning of Christ's life, not as a sud- 
den creation, but as one "born of a woman." And if he 
omits, as his plan required of him, many of the smaller 
details of the life, it is because he felt nearer to the 
Lord's death and resurrection, and these carried all 
the rest with them. They were keystones of the arch, 
determining the shape and position of every member 
of the structure. He names the trial "before Pilate," 1 
and asserts that there was another among the "rulers 
of this world" who had had a share in the deed when 
Jesus was "crucified." 2 Indeed, he describes the form 
of Christ's death at least twenty times, while there are 
nearly as many indirect allusions to that fact, and he is 
particular to say that Christ was put to death not only 
for others but by others. There are sixty of these 
references in his Epistles. He gives not only the 
burial of Jesus but the exact number of days he was in 
the sepulcher, and he names his resurrection twenty 
times. He enumerates the witnesses to that event and 
puts himself among the number, as one who after- 
ward saw the risen Lord. 3 But all this is incidental 
to his main purpose. His conception is largely doc- 
trinal ; the doctrine resting wholly on the historic fact 

1 i Tim. vi, 13. 2 1 Cor. ii, 8. 3 1 Cor. xv, 6-8. 



How Jesus Came to Us. 91 

that Christ was born, lived, died, and rose again and 
has returned to his native heaven. It will be enough 
to quote again, in a new relation, his words previously 
cited: "For our sakes he beggared himself, that we 
through his beggary might be enriched." 1 Also, "He, 
existing in the form of God, did not consider an equal 
state with God a thing to be grasped and held, but 
emptied himself and took the form of a slave, being 
made in the likeness of man." 2 Used in this way, to 
set forth the existence-form of God as taking the 
existence-form of man, the words "form of God" can- 
not denote "resemblance," but the rather the "formal 
substance." It is reality in God taking on reality in 
man. These expressions burden language. "Self-beg- 
gary" and "self-emptying" — for this is the exact sig- 
nificance of the words — declare an original state of 
divine glory, a sharing on terms of equality with God, 
and this voluntarily surrendered by the same person. 
He had been "the image of the invisible God," "the 
express image of his substance." Language is im- 
potent here. We are beyond our depth. But such 
language, which we should not dare to use of our- 
selves, is given us for our adoring thought. We may 
even venture to repeat it after the apostle ; each word 
weighty, the whole thought not comprehended but 
only apprehended; as our eye does not comprehend 
the ocean, but we so far apprehend it as to know 
there is an ocean ; some of its waves breaking at 
our feet, others of them rolling far on out of our 

1 z Cor. viii, 9. 2 Pbil. ii, 7, 8. 



92 Advent and Ascension. 

sight and dashing on the unseen shores of a distant 
continent. 

This Christ, his personality unchanged, does not 
add humanity to divinity, for that would not be an 
incarnation at all. It would not be the "self-beggary," 
or, as it has been translated, "the impoverishment." 
But not ceasing to be divine he becomes man, which 
for such a Person is a real and not an assumed humilia- 
tion. And in that state this very Person has a genuine 
human experience. 1 He, as actually "the Son of God," 
becomes as actually "the Son of man." "God," the 
whole God, "was in Christ reconciling the world unto 
himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them." 
There can be no explanation, but only the reception of 
a fact upon the testimony of God, who alone can know 
and alone can tell us of the fact. By faith in God's 
declaration alone, we receive the truth about this 
matter which he has revealed. For these remarkable 
words can mean no less than this. We do not, can- 
not, understand how it is, but only that it is. "God 
in Christ" is neither more nor less difficult than 
the conception of God apart from Christ would be. 
For any conception of the mode of God's being is 
mysterious. 

But this mystery in our Lord's nature prepares us to 
accept the holy mystery of the virgin birth. In a way 
all the facts of Christ's marvelous career, and so all 
the doctrines of his religion founded on these facts, 
hang upon the primal fact of his entrance into our 

1 See Van Dyke, Gospel for an Age of Doubt, p. 147. 



How Jesus Came to Us. 93 

human life; an entrance which should be as fitly 
unique as the life itself. 

Let us examine the contents of the evangelic testi- 
mony in our four Gospels. 

We have two genealogical tables, both of them 
plainly taken from public Jewish registers. Evidently 
these evangelists give them exactly as they find them. 
The peculiar grouping of Matthew into three classes, 
each of fourteen generations, gives clear indication that 
this was an exact transcription of Hebrew records — a 
kind of oriental mnemonics. Had there been any at- 
tempt by the Gospel writers to make the least change 
in these documents, the thing would have been detected 
by sharp-eyed opponents and the denunciation of fraud 
would not have been allowed to die out of the world's 
memory. One of these tables is given in Luke and one 
is given in Matthew. If any discrepancy can be shown, 
the trouble would not be in the transcription given by 
the Gospel writers, but must be in the rolls themselves. 
Then we should only have to say that there were ways 
of setting down the genealogical facts which are not 
known to us, and that any variations which caused no 
trouble to the Jews of that day would not disturb us 
if we knew their methods of making up these tables. 
In that case we should be obliged to confess, as we 
often must in the whole subject of ancient dates, that 
the matter is obscure. Says Rev. Dr. J. R. Thompson, 
"Chronology is peculiarly difficult when we have to 
do with oriental modes of computation, which are 
essentially different from ours." By degrees the 



94 Advent and Ascension. 

obscurity has been cleared away in this case, and we 
are coming to see that Luke follows the table that 
traces the lineal, while Matthew follows the table that 
gives the royal descent. The lineal descent in Luke 
goes back to Abraham, by whom all men were to re- 
ceive a blessing through the birth of the Coming One. 
Luke, however, is giving a universal gospel. He 
would show that the redemption is for all men, Gentiles 
as well as Jews. Jesus, as man's Saviour, has, accord- 
ingly, a pedigree extending back even beyond Abra- 
ham's day. It is to be expected that with such a 
purpose in mind Luke will trace the line back to Adam, 
the father of the race. Matthew's table is given to 
show not so much the lineal as the royal descent. In 
addressing his Gospel to the Jews he must indeed name 
Abraham, but his emphasis is upon the Lord as a son 
of a king — even King David. Hence Matthew does 
not go back, as does Luke, to Adam. His opening 
words are, "The book of the generation of Jesus 
Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." Writ- 
ing for the Jews, he will show, by his citation from 
their own tables of kingly men, that the royal blood is 
in Jesus. Of course the two tables will not always 
agree. For sometimes the family and the royal descent 
are not the same. Even to-day the rules that govern 
succession to a throne make a royal succession to differ 
at some points from a strictly family line. In the case 
of our Lord the two tables coincide in a descent from 
both Abraham and David. But Luke, tracing his 
peculiar idea of the lineal descent, goes back to David ; 



How Jesus Came to Us. 95 

then back to Abraham ; then past Abraham to Adam, 
"who was the son of God." His idea is that the sal- 
vation in Jesus Christ brings everyone who believes 
in him back to the old Eden relation of sonship once 
more. Luke's Gospel is therefore broader than Mat- 
thew's. See Luke as he sets forth a Saviour long 
expected — until men's vision grew weary, but that 
Saviour has come at length for the whole race of 
Adam. The ordinary Jew in his narrowness, had 
wanted a temporal Saviour for his own nation. But 
the half-articulated want of the race — a universal 
Saviour from sin — is met by the gospel as Luke con- 
ceives of it. See in Luke's Gospel how glad is 
Zacharias. 1 That touch could not be in Matthew, but 
Luke must preserve that story; as also the songs of 
Elisabeth and the words of Mary. 2 Luke must tell us 
that the expected One was the "Son of the Highest." 3 
Simeon and Anna in the temple, with their ascription, 
are given us by Luke, as we should expect, and they 
are omitted in Matthew for the same reason that they 
are recorded in Luke. The Christ in Luke to them 
will be first, of course, a "Saviour to Israel," but by 
him also the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. 
Luke is in close touch with these spiritual souls who 
care more for a Christ who meets deepest personal 
needs than for him as Matthew loves to depict him as 
the wonderful King setting up a "kingdom." 

It is especially to be noticed that Luke writes as one 
who belonged to the little inner circle of which Joseph 

1 Luke i, 64. 2 Luke i, 46. 3 Luke i, 32. 



96 Advent and Ascension. 

and Mary and John and Elisabeth were members ; a 
circle of friends who, after Christ had left the world, 
would be likely to talk over these matters about the 
virgin birth. His three opening chapters are employed 
in describing the circumstances before and after that 
most wonderful event. John, thinking mainly of the 
preexistence, will not cumber his story with details of 
an earthly birth. Nor will Mark, who writes with the 
idea of presenting the Christ to the Roman mind, be 
likely to mention these circumstances. These things 
lie completely outside the line of thought which John 
and Mark have selected. Even Matthew, with his idea 
of the Jewish royalty of Christ, will go into no very 
minute detail. But Luke is the physician. His studies 
lead him to think of life in its beginning and in its 
continuance. His three chapters are tender, delicate, 
beautiful, devout. They show him on terms of inti- 
macy with the "holy family." He is the one to whom, 
next to Joseph, her husband, Mary would be most 
likely to speak, subsequently to the Lord's death, about 
the wonderful annunciation and the miraculous con- 
ception of her child, Jesus. She would tell it to Luke 
as the one most likely to inquire, and the one most 
likely to receive her confidence. And Luke is the 
evangelist who should tell it to the world. Those two 
chapters, out of place in Mark or John, are exactly in 
their own place in Luke's Gospel. Only the outline of 
the story is in Matthew. Its fullness is in Luke. And 
it is so told as to wake no vulgar curiosity ; so told as 
if by one closely connected with the family circle ; so 



How Jesus Came to Us. 97 

told — this is the singular impression it makes — as if 
he had used some of the very words, so pure and 
delicate, that Mary herself had employed in telling the 
sweet story to him. There is a touch of a pure 
woman's hand and heart in the story. And in his 
words, "as is commonly believed among us," the "us" 
may have referred especially to the membership of the 
"holy family," though the further reference may have 
been to the general body of Christians. The account 
of that birth has individuality in it. This is the report 
of one who was in close touch with the mother and 
who knew the holy secret of the virgin birth. The 
story is the climax of the world's literature for delicacy 
and purity. Its own self, like the sun's own sunshine, 
is evidence of its truth. If ever inspiration, it is here. 
Thanks be to God for Luke's narrative, with its abso- 
lute transparency and its self-evident air of perfect 
truthfulness ! Coming from such a man, clearly in the 
private confidence of the parties, and recording not 
only the facts but what these persons thought and 
said and did, the whole story as related by Luke is 
simply the perfection of realism. 

There was no need of inventing such a story — set- 
ting aside the impossibility of such an invention; no 
need for purpose of ritual celebration. For though 
all doctrine, as all fact in Christianity, hangs upon 
Christ's coming in some such way, yet no celebration 
of a natal day is demanded nor is any rite given to 
perpetuate the fact in the world's memory. But it was 
the tender, winsome story of a happy event, taken out 
7 



98 Advent and Ascension. 

of the privacy of a sacred home, and given to the 
world when Joseph and Mary and Elisabeth saw that 
Luke would show forth Jesus as the wide world's 
Saviour. 

Turn now to Matthew's story. He would show that 
Jesus Christ is of royal descent ; he is in David's line. 
David was the poet-king of the Hebrew nation. His 
son, Solomon, was the king whose success in art, in 
letters, and in wisdom had made him famous through- 
out the oriental world. Among the tribes the tribe of 
Judah was the royal one. The ten tribes in Christ's 
day had not been regathered. They were as lost then 
as now. Two tribes only had returned from the 
Captivity, Judah and Benjamin. Until a little time 
after Christ's death these tribes kept their registers 
apart; so that, while there was the popular name of 
''the Jews" for both, it could be clearly known that a 
given man was really a Jew, a descendant of the tribe 
of Judah. But from the time of the Roman destruction 
of Jerusalem these family registers are not to be 
found. No Jew on earth to-day can show that he is 
not a Benjamite rather than a Judahite. It is im- 
possible to trace now anything like a royal descent 
from David. That descent could have been shown in 
Christ's day. All persons had been obliged by Roman 
law to enroll themselves for "the taxing" according 
to their tribes. Jesus Christ came when his pedigree 
could be known. Hence the very great importance 
attached by Matthew to the list, as shown in his quota- 
tion not only of the names, but of the very peculiar way 



How Jesus Came to Us. 99 

of numbering, by "fourteen generations." It was a 
kind of popular Jewish mnemonics. 

In connection with these records the evangelists 
Matthew and Luke assert that Jesus was born in 
Bethlehem, and Luke is very specific as to the accom- 
panying circumstances. Luke's statement about the 
birthplace has been questioned on the ground of alleged 
discrepancies of date as well as place. He has been 
accused of placing a census ordered twelve years after 
Christ's birth, under Quirinus, at a time when, his- 
torically, it did not occur, and when Quirinus was not 
the census maker. Luke associates the two events, a 
census and the birth of a child, and asserts also that, 
under a Roman census, the Jewish method of taking 
it was employed — both of which things it is alleged 
are unhistoric. The fact, also, that our Lord was 
known as Jesus of Nazareth rather than as Jesus of 
Bethlehem, has been taken as an additional reason for 
distrusting Luke's story of his birthplace. 

But all these considerations, founded as they are 
upon negations, while they do not disturb the believer, 
have started investigations which in the end have 
been reassuring. That a census was ordered under 
Quirinus, A. D. 6 or 7, is admitted. But what if this 
occurred in the second term of Quirinus's governor- 
ship? His first term synchronized with Herod's last 
years. Suppose this to be the actual order of events: 
Augustus issues a decree for a universal enrollment on 
a systematic plan ; this enrollment is to take place 
periodically — exactly as we now know the Roman en- 

L. of Lr. 



ioo Advent and Ascension. 

rollment in Egypt to have been periodical, for every 
fourteen years. This enrollment is what Luke names. 
But the object, as we know, was that "all the world 
should be taxed." The actual enforcement of the 
general order for "all the world," occurred in Pales- 
tine at the time of our Lord's birth. The general 
system of periodic enrollment established by the 
Roman emperor was the basis of the Jewish national 
enrollment under Herod. This general system had 
its series of enforcements, and "the first" of them is 
the one described so carefully by Luke, who tells us 
when and how it was put in force in Syria. He men- 
tions at the outset the universal Roman decree, and 
then he carefully proceeds to describe one of the 
periods when the subordinate province undertook the 
execution of it. And Luke's extreme accuracy is fur- 
ther shown when we find him describing, not the 
Roman method of procedure attempted afterward and 
recorded by Josephus as "the great census" rousing a 
rebellion, but a previous census carried out in the 
Jewish form by tribal enumeration — a clear concession 
to Jewish feeling. Luke carefully explains this pro- 
vincial arrangement. To do this by household was 
not the usual Roman method; but the same end was 
secured with less friction and with no great hardship, 
when employed in a small country like Palestine, 
where tribal feeling was strong and tribal enumeration 
was easy, and where the people were accustomed to 
annual religious gatherings, such as the Passover, etc. 
The intimations that Luke has here made some mistake 



How Jesus Came to Us. ;ioi 

are evidently groundless, and only serve to call atten- 
tion to his broad and yet exact knowledge of all the 
facts. 

Nor can any doubt be thrown upon the place of our 
Lord's birth because of the phrase "Jesus of Nazareth/' 
His abiding in Bethlehem was only for a little time; 
his home and his parents' home for many years was 
in Nazareth. History has its noble names recalled 
not so much by the place of birth as by that of 
residence. How could he have been known by any 
other name than "Jesus °f Nazareth" when the term 
"Jesus of Bethlehem" would have been held to describe 
another person than he ? His years, until ripe man- 
hood, were passed in the upland village of Galilee, 
from which place "his fame went forth," and the 
historic fact, so far from being periled, is the rather 
made prominent ; since in any general record of his life 
a careless narrator would have put down his birth- 
place and that of his long residence as one and the 
same. The conclusion, then, is that Jesus was born in 
Bethlehem, but became known to the world from the 
city, out of the privacy of which he emerged into his 
public life, as "Jesus of Nazareth." 

But in Matthew's Gospel, following the annuncia- 
tion of his birth at Bethlehem, we have a book written 
about a single idea: Jesus Christ is King. Matthew 
begins with the kingly descent. He has the Jews of 
his own day in mind. He knows that the great outside 
world would care very little, but that the inner Jewish 
world would care very much for the direct and positive 



102 Advent and Ascension. 

proof on this one point, so essential to them in all 
their ideas of the true Christ. 

At the outset he will meet all questions by his 
genealogical lists. In the first Christian century, in 
controversy with the Jews, this was immensely im- 
portant. Joseph must be registered as Mary's hus- 
band, his name taking the place of hers in public 
documents. But he was also of royal descent. This 
man Joseph is "of the house and lineage of David." 1 
For the first thirty years, in meeting Jewish objectors, 
this was an important fact. If Matthew had cited the 
tables wrongly the error would have been seized upon 
by objectors. But here was Joseph's name in the 
family registers of Luke, showing him in the Abra- 
hamic line, and also in Matthew's list, showing him to 
be in the Davidic or kingly line. Jesus stood on the 
public records of the Jews as legal heir of Joseph. The 
two genealogies, that of Luke and that of Matthew, 
are genealogies of Joseph as the two appeared on the 

1 In a copy of the recently discovered Syriac version of Matthew's 
Gospel a blundering effort has been made to change the words, Matt. 
i, 1 6, "Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born 
Jesus, who is called Christ," into "Joseph (to whom was espoused the 
virgin Mary) begat Jesus who is called Christ." So, too, verse 25, 
which reads, "She brought forth a son," is changed to "she bare him a 
son." The object evidently was to favor opposers who claimed that the 
birth of Jesus was natural. But the blunderer left unchanged the 
eighth verse, which reads, "found with child of the Holy Ghost" — a 
flat contradiction to the change the objector had made. So, too, he 
retains the nineteenth verse, which tells us that "Joseph was minded to 
put her away." Of course, had the birth occurred in natural genera- 
tion, that would have been an act without a motive. The one changed 
manuscript serves rather for curiosity than inquiry. But it also shows 
(1) the motherhood conceded; (2) the question of fatherhood discussed 
in a narrow circle; (3) a tendency to seek for a perfect humanity in 
Christ as necessary to the idea of completeness in him; (4) that any 
alteration of the evangelical accuracy would be so out of harmony with 
the story as a whole that it surely would be detected. 



How Jesus Came to Us. 103 

registration tables. His name on these rolls as her 
husband would represent her name. But Mary was 
the daughter of Jacob and so was cousin to Joseph, 
afterward her husband. 1 Thus in fact there is a double 
royal descent in "the Joseph family." Family heirs 
and royal heirs, in a way not unknown to modern 
history, come together again, their descent traced in 
different ways, in the one "holy family" at Nazareth. 

All through his Gospel Matthew sees the kingly in 
Jesus. Incidents not bearing on this regal idea are 
either omitted or barely noticed, while occasionally 
even the order of time is forgotten in so massing the 
events in an effective grouping that every reader may 
see the kingship of the Lord. He is the evangelist 
who tells of John as a forerunner. A forerunner 7 
heralds a king. He is the evangelist who sees Christ 
as a king overcoming the king of evil in the Tempta- 
tion. 3 Matthew's great phrase is "the kingdom" and 
"the kingdom of heaven." He is at especial pains to 



1 "In the public registers Jesus could only appear as Joseph's son 
(comp. John i, 45). In transferring them to the pages of the Gospels 
the evangelists only add the qualifying expression "as was supposed" 
(Luke iii, 23; Matt, i, 16). They are both genealogies of Joseph; that 
is, of Jesus Christ as the reputed and legal son of Joseph and Mary. 
The genealogy of St. Matthew is Joseph's genealogy as legal successor 
to the throne of David; the successive heirs of the kingdom ending 
with Christ as Joseph's "reputed" son. St. Luke's is Joseph's private 
genealogy, exhibiting his real birth. One evangelist shows the heirs to 
David's throne, the other exhibits the paternal stem of Him who was 
the heir. This explains the anomalies of the two pedigrees, and shows 
their agreements as well as their discrepancies, and the circumstance 
of there being two genealogies. Mary, the mother of Jesus, was in all 
probability the daughter of Jacob (the "Jacob" mentioned in the list) 
and first cousin to Joseph, her husband. So that in point of fact, 
though not of form, both genealogies are as much hers as her hus- 
band's." — Smith, Student's New Testament History, p. 163. 

3 Matt, ii, 1. 3 Matt, iv, 1, 11. 



104 Advent and Ascension. 

record the instances in which our Lord directly claims 
authority. He gives the scene with the Twelve; also 
that in which Christ made the claim before the people. 
He shows how the Messiah "must needs have suf- 
fered ;" for the evangelist has in mind the Jewish idea 
that the Messiah should not suffer, and he will show 
the Jews, from their own Scriptures, their mistake. 
Matthew is the one who, as might be expected, dwells, 
in his twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth chapters, on the 
royal second coming of Christ, at which as King and 
Judge, he shall assemble all men for the final account. 
Its first words are, "Jesus Christ, son of David," its 
last regal words are, "Lo, I am with you unto the end 
of the world ;" and in all between the opening and the 
closing words there are set forth the kingly miracles, 
the kingly promises, the kingly resurrection, the kingly 
commission of the disciples and the kingly return of 
the Lord. In short, the whole Gospel is the story of a 
King, Jesus Christ. 

It will not be needful to show why Mark, writing 
for the Roman world, did not give special prominence 
to the ideas which govern both Matthew and Luke. 
The Roman world would not care for the tables that 
the other evangelists give with such exactness. But 
there was one thing which would attract the Roman. 
The world's master was Csesar. Mark would present 
Jesus Christ as the Master of another kind of empire. 
Mastery anywhere drew Roman attention. In his care 
for the Roman readers he stops to translate any unfa- 
miliar term into words they would immediately recog- 



How Jesus Came to Us. 105 

nize. He is short, swift, incisive. He delights in any 
imperative word or deed. He omits long discourses. 
He is graphic ; writing in the present tense, as an eye- 
witness. This is so evident that his Gospel has the air 
of being dictated mainly by Peter. His persistence 
in looking upon the resurrection from the Roman point 
of view is significant. He details the share of the 
Roman power in all the incidents of the death and the 
resurrection. He is the evangelist who records those 
last imperative words — words that breathe mastery 
and victory — "Go ye into all the world, and preach the 
gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is 
baptized shall be saved ; he that believeth not shall be 
damned." 1 In Mark, from first sentence to last, Jesus 
is the manly and masterful Christ. 

John differs from all the others in his aim and 
method. He assembles his material about the idea of 
a divine Christ who had been a temporary visitant to 
earth from heaven. There was no reason why he 
should so much as name the virgin birth. It was out 
of his view. It was not unknown, but altogether 
aside from his aim. It would have been out of his line 
for him to write one word about it. His whole Gospel 
is conceived along another line of thinking. He is 
intent on the preexistence of his Lord. The earthly 
life, glorious as it is, is but incidental. He is depicting 
the heavenly Christ of the dateless birth. His Christ 
is outside the limits of time. The great thing was his 
preexistence "before the world was." He had always 

1 Mark xvi, 15-18. 



106 Advent and Ascension. 

been "with God." He "was God." 1 The whole Gospel 
is Christ's humanly divine and divinely human heart 
laid bare. He is with men a little time. He quickly 
resumes his own native heaven. John's Gospel is the 
Gospel of the "Son of God." It fitly comes after the 
others, completing the series. John will say little that 
they have said. He knows the story of the early life 
as well as Matthew and Luke, for they have writ- 
ten it out before he writes his Gospel. He has no 
call to tell it again. He names John, but John is not 
"John the Baptist" to him; John is only a "witness" 
to Christ. 

But his incidental words show his knowledge of the 
virgin birth. His theme is the Son of God become the 
Son of man. "The Word was made flesh." 2 It was not 
a process of addition. It was not God and man. It 
was not a man manifesting God. It was not God ab- 
sorbing or even enwrapping man. It was God becoming 
man; "made flesh." He thus assumes that the virgin 
birth is well known, just as he assumes a knowledge of 
parables that he does not mention in detail. It is the 
same with miracles, which to him are simply "mighty 
works." He supplies the teaching that went with the 
parables and miracles which the others, in their aims, 
had been led to record. He supplements not only 
their plan with his plan but their few words with his 
many. He will show Christ doing more at his death 
than at his birth. Luke's two chapters about the be- 
ginning are paralleled by John's ten chapters about 

1 John i, i, 2. J John i, 14. 



How Jesus Came to Us. 107 

the closing of the Lord's life. "The only begotten 
Son" had "been made flesh" to show himself more 
divine in death than in life; on the cross than in the 
manger. Others have named Bethlehem, he will name 
Calvary. He speaks of a marvel of "the beginning" 
greater than the virgin birth named so specifically by 
Matthew and Luke ; a marvel, too, of the closing days 
of the Lord, which is more supernatural than the 
miraculous advent of Jesus when he visited these 
mortal shores. 

Thus it is clear that the omission of specific details 
concerning the virgin birth by two of the evangelists is 
warranted by their aim in composing their Gospels. 
Such mention should not be expected by them. Such 
mention would be forced and unnatural ; would' even 
be suspicious in John and Mark, while its absence 
would be impossible in Matthew and Luke. Enough 
now to notice that the omission for good and sufficient 
reasons by Mark and John does not impair in the least 
the credibility of the two evangelists who are the very 
ones expected to record it ; the ones who, omitting to 
record the lineal and the regal descent and the details 
of that wonderful birth, would have left us in a strange 
surprise. Doubt would have been awakened. Immense 
difficulties would have been felt, not only by Jewish 
converts in the earliest Christian centuries, but in all 
subsequent centuries, by those who crave a fair degree 
of completeness in their conception of the way in 
which the Son of God became the Son of man. 

It has been intimated that, as elsewhere the wish is 



108 Advent and Ascension. 

sometimes the father to the invention, so it might have 
been here; that each of these two evangelists would 
feel the need of answering the questions sure to be 
asked, because of his peculiar point of view, about the 
birth of this Jesus for whom so much was claimed. 
Sooner or later every man who should read the story 
of the subsequent life would ask about its beginnings. 
How did he come to us? What of his parentage? 
How did he pass his earlier years? Objectors would 
ask, and converts would also inquire. And we may 
be sure that this demand for knowledge concerning 
the birth of Jesus would lead the two men who were 
best able to conduct a careful investigation, because of 
their previous training and employments, to examine 
the sources of the evidence. And they were near 
enough to those who knew the original secret. The 
special care of Matthew as he explains the "fourteen 
generations," and of Luke as he brings together the 
order of events in the separate stories of Elisabeth's 
child and of Mary's child, shows the painstaking work 
of the evangelists. The whole air and aspect of the 
story by Luke, its purity and delicacy, the motherly 
touches in the words of the older saint and in those of 
the virgin at the annunciation, the whole combination 
of circumstances at the temple and at Nazareth, the 
unique birthplace and the political reason that secures 
the presence of Mary and Joseph at Bethlehem, and 
all the story of that wonderful boyhood — the invention 
of all these things and the weaving of them into one 
harmonious story, is as evidently beyond Luke or 



How Jesus Came to Us. 109 

any other Jew of his time as would be the making 
of a world. 

Let us examine the recorded story: Luke's pro- 
logue is very significant. Has he in mind his own 
three opening chapters when he uses the words "a 
perfect understanding from the first"? Has he an 
especial emphasis on these incidents of the virgin birth 
when he speaks of the things "believed among us"? 
Has he reference to Mary's disclosure to him when he 
would "set the things in order ;" when, also, he speaks 
of consulting "eyewitnesses"? Does he mean that his 
testimony is for the logical faculty in its demands, and 
also for the soul, which must have its satisfactions? 
But he may mean more than this; namely, that the 
self-evident power of the facts is matched by the self- 
evident inspiration of the records. 1 

It is the year 748 A. U. C. ; six years before our 
Christian era began. In the priestly course of Abia, 
a man, Zacharias by name, had been selected by lot to 
do weekly service in burning incense upon the altar 
in the holy place. He was about sixty years of age, 
and his home with his wife, Elisabeth, was in a quiet 
country town in Palestine. They were both, as Luke 
tells us, well known and largely esteemed for devout- 
ness and uprightness and blamelessness in all duty. 
The age of the man, his whole character, his office, his 
reputation among friends and neighbors all forbid the 

1 Paul and Luke were at one time companions in spreading the 
gospel. Luke's facts were thus known to Paul. So that the two men 
are mutual in their testimony to the world. 



no Advent and Ascension. 

idea of undue excitement, of self-deception, and of 
attempted fraud. In the story, names, dates, places of 
abode, and official stations are all given. Had there 
been any mistake, let alone anything like falsehood, 
there was abundant opportunity in the immediately 
succeeding years to point out the incorrectness of his 
statements. Luke's narration is that of a man who 
sets down the facts from Zacharias's own lips. And 
this is the story of Zacharias. He had stood one morn- 
ing in October at the altar in the Holy Place. The 
glowing coals were on it. The signal was given. The 
cloud rises about him. The other priests have gone 
down the platform steps and are prostrate with the 
people before God. Suddenly an angel appears, seen 
by himself, if hidden from others by the veil of smoke. 
He describes the positions where he stood and where 
the angel stood. The celestial visitor tells him of a 
child to be born in his home. The vision is not at 
all in the line of his thought as he stands there in 
the act of performing, it may be for the first time in 
his life, this holy duty. Nothing suggests it. The 
visitor promises a boy. The boy will receive a peculiar 
name. He will be widely known — a thing Zacharias 
could not have imagined in his secluded life. The child 
shall be a Nazarene from his birth. He will be an 
Elijah. He will receive, not by any subsequent endow- 
ment, as had the prophets, but from the outset of life, 
the measure of the Holy Spirit as large as God can 
give to man. He will precede the Messiah and prepare 
the way before him. But Zacharias is in no credulous 



How Jesus Came to Us. hi 

mood. In the long previous years he may have wanted 
a son for himself, but this promised son for "all Israel" 
is not the home-child he had desired. Surprised, be- 
wildered, he cannot believe his own ears. He asks a 
sign of this thing — and receives one that is in part a 
penalty for his unbelief, in part a remarkable testimony 
to all the people. He goes to the steps to do his next 
duty, that of pronouncing the benediction on the pros- 
trate worshipers, but his tongue fails him. He can 
only make signs that he has seen a vision in the Holy 
Place. And the people understand that the pious 
priest, whom everybody trusts, has received a revela- 
tion that he cannot yet communicate to men. He goes 
out, goes home, and in seclusion spends the following 
months. 

If we look closely at the whole story its general im- 
pression is favorable. The incident of the angel is 
of course supernatural. So Zacharias thought, and so 
thought Luke when Zacharias told him, and when the 
evangelist calmly set it down in the forefront of his 
Gospel. Unless a man assumes as a rule for himself 
that the supernatural shall under no circumstances 
have his belief, he must see that the aged priest's tes- 
timony ought to receive credence. The only reason 
for setting the testimony aside is that the facts are 
wonderful. But in a world of wonders, millions of 
which, though inexplicable, are believed in as facts by 
every sane mind, that objection is of little weight. If, 
as prophecy declared, there was to be a forerunner for 
the most w r onderful of all persons, the Messiah of God, 



ii2 Advent and Ascension. 

then the fact that the forerunner should have some 
preparatory mystery about his birth is not unreason- 
able. Not an iota of evidence has ever been alleged 
against the incident, and it stands as the fit introduction 
to what follows. 

In the little town of Bethlehem, a few months after 
the events above named, there was a birth, the circum- 
stances of which were so exactly out of accord with all 
Jewish ideas and teachings and expectations that no 
Hebrew mind could have imagined them. 1 To a virgin 
had appeared one of God's chief angels. Her home 
was at Nazareth and she was espoused to one Joseph, 
who, though, like herself, of royal lineage, was living 
in a home as far removed from poverty as from wealth. 
The annunciation was made to her that she was to be 
the mother of "the Messiah." She hesitates. She 
fears. This thing was in no line of expectation with 
her. She was told of the overshadowing of the High- 
est and of the Holy Spirit as coming to her. Her 
child is to be the "Son of the Highest." She retires 
in maidenly modesty, finds Elisabeth, and they in 
divine joyfulness and happy confidence, tell each other 
of all that has occurred. Those who have known 
the oriental freedom which has in it neither prudery 
nor yet undue license in such matters, will not wonder 



1 "It has often been attempted to throw discredit on the story of our 
Lord's supernatural origin by comparing it to the heathen stories of 
how sons of the gods were born of mortal mothers; but, first, such an 
idea was utterly repugnant to the Jewish conception of God and could 
not spring up on Jewish soil; and, secondly, even these stories, poured 
forth from the heathen mind, were indications of a deep sense in hu- 
manity of the need of the Incarnation." — Stalker, Life of Christ, p. 156. 



How Jesus Came to Us. it 13 

at the unbosoming of the details by these women to 
each other, nor at the story of the interview as given 
in all delicacy by the physician and evangelist Luke. 
Whatever our Western ideas and the severer restric- 
tions of our century might impose on the narrative, if 
the story were to be written to-day, this is asserted by 
those whose knowledge of Eastern life makes their 
testimony of worth: that the narrative is within the 
bounds of delicacy as understood when Luke penned 
his opening chapters. And the mothers of all ages 
and of all lands, Eastern and Western, have turned to 
the tender story of the salutations of the two women, 
and have agreed in the praise of their pure and reverent 
words. The songs of both the women are true Hebrew 
songs, alike in form and spirit. They help us to feel 
the reality of the position. Such songs could have 
been sung only on Hebrew soil and by the hallowed 
lips of pure Hebrew women. A hint of Joseph's sur- 
prise is given. He is at first incredulous, but he yields 
to the evidence, and instead of putting Mary away he 
holds her in all purity, and his name and hers at length 
are recorded as husband and wife. The witnesses 
agree. Zacharias and Elisabeth and Joseph and Mary 
meet and mingle their testimony before the holy Child 
is born. Mary is sheltered in the tender care and love 
of those who know the facts. 

There was another consenting circumstance. That 
a Roman emperor should order an enrollment in order 
that he might levy a tax is not a thing unknown out- 
side of sacred story. That it should extend to Pales- 
8 



H4 Advent and Ascension. 

tine is not incredible. And, further, that the officials 
of Palestine should take their own Jewish methods of 
registration, by tribes, is exactly in accord with the 
policy of the empire, which was to not unduly offend 
provincial feeling. The Roman law required registra- 
tion in one's "own city;" the Hebrew custom added 
enrollment by "tribe" or clan, and also by the ancestral 
"house" or "lineage." Joseph and Mary go to Beth- 
lehem, betrothed at the time, and afterward, at the 
point of time of the gospel story, they are legally hus- 
band and wife. 

The careful narrative makes each of these things 
distinct. For they are parts of the rapidly accumula- 
ting evidence. Another item must be noted. In the 
far East astrology has been from time immemorial a 
favorite study. We need not think of it, as it is to-day, 
associated with fraud and fortune telling. It was 
really an astronomy in its primal form. Men studied 
the starry volume as we the printed page. Tradition 
held the world's steady belief to the idea that stars 
heralded the birth of great men, and that when the 
"divine Man" should come a new star would grace the 
sky. That God should use so venerable a tradition, 
not wholly, it may be, without his own indirect inspi- 
ration, is what we might expect. The world's selectest 
students needed in their own line a testimony from 
God to the advent of his Son. A new star seen by the 
"wise men of the East," shining low in the western 
air, was God's way of giving the expected sign. The 
story of the visit of the Magi is simple, direct, unmis- 



How Jesus Came to Us. 115 

takable. It alleges an occurrence which, if true, was 
a public fact, and which, if unhistoric, could have been 
shown to be false. Had there been any fraud, quick- 
sighted enemies would not have failed to show that 
no such arrival had taken place. Nor would their con- 
futation have been allowed to perish from the litera- 
ture of objection. These men follow the supernatural 
star — a star seen, it may be, only by themselves. Its 
light guides them to Jerusalem, where their visit alarms 
the king. The light leads them onward and falls lower 
over a town, lower yet, over a single building in 
Bethlehem. 

In contrast with the visit of the Magi from the East, 
whose intellectual search prepared them for the advent, 
was that of a little company of plain men within a 
mile of the little village. Not less earnest were these 
shepherds than those wise men. The God whose Holy 
Spirit moved on the minds of distant students, wrought 
on the hearts of these nearer men, who were waiting 
and watching for the "Shepherd King" of Hebrew 
prophecy. As those by "a star," so these by the more 
Judean idea of "angels" are visited by Him who uses 
the varied expectations he rouses in men's minds and 
hearts. How beautiful the variety of these manifesta- 
tions which prepared for the Christ who should span 
all widest differences and unite all greatest contrasts, 
thus meeting the needs of all classes, from the scholarly 
Magi to the pious but untaught shepherds. To all 
the diversities of men, he, in his diversity, is the One 
sent of God. 



n6 Advent and Ascension. 

"In quiet ever and in shade 

Shepherd and Sage may find; 
They who have bowed untaught to Nature's sway 
And they who follow Truth along her star-paved way." 

Plain men with large hearts and cultured men of wide 
mental demand were both to be satisfied of the new 
fact and then to give their testimony to the world. 
Angels are to one what the star is to the other. It is to 
be noted that the words of the angel song are accord- 
ing to the Hebraic conception of that period. What 
invention would have put into angelic lips in the next 
century may be imagined from the puerilities of the 
Apocryphal Gospels. The angel tone is true to the 
whole event of the Incarnation. The form of the song 
is simple, but its scope is as wide as earth and heaven. 
The grand chorus fits the theme, the time, the occa- 
sion, the purpose. From its "Glory to God in the 
highest, and peace on earth to men of good will," 
nothing can be taken without loss and nothing added 
with any gain. It has the simplicity of unrivaled full- 
ness. And so it comes about that the angels' song and 
the shepherds' visit give us another happy attestation 
in that accumulating series of events which divine care 
has furnished to human inquiry. 

The incident of the virgin birth of the Holy Child 
whose cradle is the manger is a touch that, while going 
to the world's heart, has in it, as the story is told, an 
air of reality. The crowded inn, the visit of shepherd 
and Magi, the contrasts between the adorations and the 
surroundings, the meeting of extremes in outward 



How Jesus Came to Us. 117 

circumstance so befitting the extremes which find ex- 
pression when the Son of God becomes the Son of 
man — these make up the wondrous fact. Was it not 
intended, in the action and interaction, in the single- 
ness of these conspiring circumstances and yet their 
happy blending in the virgin birth, that there should 
be a self-evident testimony like that which, again and 
again, afterward, in our Lord's earthly career, com- 
pelled notice and produced conviction? 

And these facts make a double appeal. They speak 
to both the reason and the heart. Both parts of our 
nature, in their united action, are to be met and 
satisfied. If a man shall refuse to consider that the 
heart has its demand as well as the logical reason, is he 
really logical ? Is there not the morally logical as well 
as the intellectually logical? And in the union of the 
two, each helpful to the other, do we not find the only 
complete satisfaction in questions like that before us 
now? Both these witnessing lines meet in their testi- 
mony to the virgin birth. Considered apart they are 
weighty evidence, taken together they are convincing 
proof. 

And there is another aspect of the story which, if it 
may not add to the proof, is of the nature of an answer 
to objectors. It is sometimes said that the virgin birth 
and its attendant incidents are miraculous; as if the 
miraculous was therefore to be dismissed instantly as 
unworthy of credence. But the singular thing about 
Luke and Matthew is that they do not use the word 
miracle in this connection. That a fact is miraculous 



n8 Advent and Ascension. 

is always and everywhere merely inferential. It is 
merely deduction from the fact. So that proof, not a 
whit more or less, is required as to the facts them- 
selves. It is not the miracle that is to be proved, but 
the facts. Subsequently, there is a wholly separate 
question. It is the question of whether the facts are 
or are not of a character to be classed under the head 
of the miraculous. The proof of the reality of the 
facts does not depend at all on the further and wholly 
distinct inquiry as to whether they are human, angelic, 
diabolical, or divine in their origin. True, we may 
think it worth while, in some cases involving immense 
interests to large numbers of people, to examine with 
more care the evidence offered in proof; and this not 
because more evidence is required, but because of the 
larger interests at stake. A thing cannot be more than 
proved, however important it may be to mankind at 
large or to any individual of the race. It is charac- 
teristic of the scientific method to be as exact in exam- 
ining the minute as the large. Facts are facts, and 
require only proof that they are facts, no matter what 
inferences follow from them. 1 

1 "I have not the slightest objection to offer a priori to all the proposi- 
tions in the three creeds. The mysteries of the Church are child's 
play compared with the mysteries of nature. The doctrine of the 
Trinity is not more puzzling than the necessary antinomies of physical 
speculation; virgin procreation and resuscitation from apparent death 
are ordinary phenomena for the naturalist. It would be a great error 
to suppose that the agnostic rejects theology because of its puzzles and 
wonders. He rejects it simply because in his judgment there would be 
no evidence sufficient to warrant the theological propositions, even if 
they relate to the commonest and most obvious everyday propositions." — 
Letter of Huxley, quoted in Incarnation, Gore, p. 266. So that while 
the greater wonders in nature can be proved, the smaller wonders in 
religion cannot be! God can brine about facts that men will call 
miraculous; but he cannot give proof of them which shall be credible! 



How Jesus Came to Us. 119 

With the detail characteristic of Luke in the story 
of the early life we have the singular scene of the pres- 
entation in the temple. It was an act of obedience to 
the Hebrew law. Here again comes out a corrobora- 
tion of the mystery that meets us at every stage of the 
Incarnation. Over against the lowliness seen in the 
humble offering and in the purchase money paid by 
the mother as the "redemption" for her firstborn child 
is the significant prophecy by Simeon, "He shall be a 
light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of Israel." 
This spiritual man, by special illumination, discerns 
the holy fact. It is not told us that he was in Mary's 
confidence. The tone of the statement looks the other 
way. The reasoning by which the soul finds its satis- 
factions is as swift and sure as that of the logical 
faculty. And yet that the Babe, though without ex- 
ternal signs to a stranger eye, should have impressed 
so profoundly a venerable and devout man is due to 
the divine side of a fact the human side of which was 
a mere child presented for the usual purification. The 
people believed in signs, and God met them by a sign 
which the more spiritual men who frequented the 
temple must have known, and which they, as did his 
mother, must have "hid in their hearts." Then follows 
the childhood, with the journey to Egypt and the 
return ; the boyhood at Nazareth, with the visit to the 
temple; at each point the wide contrast of one fact 
set over against the other in the strange years of 
waiting for his public mission. The details are not 
abundant; but there are devout students to-day who 



120 Advent and Ascension.. 

magnify the tokens of the divine, and there are those 
who emphasize the marks of the human nature. Jesus, 
afterward in active service, was then in submission. 
He was waiting. 

Here, as well, perhaps, as at any other place in our 
discussion, we may stop over the alleged limitations 
of our Lord's nature by his humanity. Such limita- 
tions have been urged as coming from his childhood, 
from his manhood, from his earthly surroundings, and 
from his official relation to his Father. These limita- 
tions have been asserted as existing in the very nature 
of things, and as confirmed by some of his own declara- 
tions about his own lack of knowledge, at certain times, 
concerning events that a divine Being must neces- 
sarily know. As these questions bear, sometimes 
directly and sometimes indirectly, on the special point 
of our inquiry — the reality of the virgin birth — they 
crave a few words of notice. Only let this be always 
kept in mind, that we study the mystery of the Incar- 
nation. The inquiry about the other alleged limita- 
tions will help us when we return to our specific 
question. 

i. The impressions of the virgin mother herself are 
of worth. She knew the secret of his birth. She 
seems, however, to have held it for a time, in some 
partial obscurity through her human mother-love. His 
subjection to his legal parents carries with it their 
assertion of authority over him. Yet, always, as 
against this, is her treasuring the other series of facts 
"in her heart." Her treatment of him as a human 



How Jesus Came to Us. 121 

child is the impression we gain from the record of the 
evangelists. True, she was liable to mistake, as one 
who was human herself. Her own sinlessness is not 
anywhere intimated, nor is her sinlessness needed to 
assure the sinlessness of her Son, any more than is her 
mother's sinlessness required to assure Mary's sinless- 
ness; let the miracle of sinlessness be placed where 
the Scriptures place it — at his birth. Nevertheless her 
impressions about her child have value, and they are 
not by any means exclusively in the one or the other 
direction. Did she feel differently at different hours? 
Did she tell Luke, after the birth of her Son, and only 
in a fragmentary way, of her impressions, and did 
he set them down as she gave them — neither Luke 
nor Mary attempting any full theory of him in his 
childhood? 

2. The impression made by his subsequent life on 
the general public is to be considered. There are a 
good many hints and some positive declarations about 
this popular estimation. For opponents let us not care ; 
but a great number of men at different times and in a 
general way followed him and listened to him. Some 
came for his miracles, some for his teachings, and 
some thought him a new "prophet;" some hoped he 
was the harbinger of the Messiah. The impression 
was that of uniqueness in his character and mission. 
Many could not make him out. He seemed, as indeed 
he was, a mystery. For such was his position in the 
work prescribed by his Father that this apparent sup- 
pression was necessary; and this idea of him as not 



122 Advent and Ascension. 

yet fully revealed, as one to be better known farther 
on, may be set down as the general impression he left 
on the fair-minded Jews of his day. 

3. His own disciples had also a varying estimate of 
him. His words grew more full about his own nature 
and mission as the three eventful years went by. It is 
not necessary, as some have done, to mark the time 
when they all passed into any full recognition of him. 
The general company of believers doubtless varied in 
their estimate as the years succeeded each other. To 
the select few, the inner circle of the apostles, the reve- 
lation seems to have been larger. Peter had an hour 
of vision when he exclaimed, "Thou art the Son of 
God." The degree of the revelation seems to have 
been governed by the receptivity of the hearer; the 
woman of Samaria getting a declaration of who He 
was that spoke to her before some in the outer circle. 
The impression is, again, that of mysteriousness. These 
disciples appear to be drawn by an indefinable per- 
sonality. They plainly treated him as a man, and, as 
plainly, he was more than man to them. His experi- 
ence was clearly to them that of a person with a single 
consciousness. It is not in evidence that he left any 
impression of a consciousness in which in one class of 
experiences he was divine, in another human. His 
followers seem never to have thought of him as two 
persons — sometimes one and sometimes the other. He 
left on them the impression that he was one Person, 
with one consciousness at all times. True, their read- 
ing of their Lord may not have been that of sinless 



How Jesus Came to Us. 123 

persons or of persons perfect in knowledge, though so 
near to him. And yet their estimate is of worth. 

4. Our Lord's own estimate of himself might be 
gathered from certain utterances; yet these are occa- 
sionally overborne by others of a totally different kind. 
Are these due to his position rather than to his own 
nature ? Some of them may be so considered, as when, 
after declaring his oneness in nature with God, he 
proceeds immediately to describe his official relation, 
in which he says, "My Father is greater than I." But 
one thing is clear even in these utterances, that Jesus 
is one Person. So, too, there are apparent limita- 
tions of mission and apparent limitations coming from 
different parts of his mission as he suits himself to 
them. A universal Saviour, he was apparently limited 
in his personal ministry to a single nation. It was not 
as if he had been born and done his work in cosmopoli- 
tan Rome. He was sent only "to the lost sheep of the 
house of Israel," but, though a Jew, he is world-wide 
in his precepts ; founding them upon God's providence 
to all men and his sending out his gospel to "every 
creature." Restricted in position, his unrestricted 
promises ring out to "whosoever will." He spoke out 
of fullness and left the impression that he himself felt 
that more was to follow. The disciples, after he should 
leave them, were to preach a gospel more complete in 
some respects than he had preached. 1 He felt, evi- 
dently, that the mission of his personal life was nar- 
rower than himself. 

1 John xvi, 12. 



124 Advent and Ascension. 

Just the line of Christ's personal consciousness in 
childhood and manhood we can never fully under- 
stand. It is a fact before which we bow in all humility 
and reverence. He was fully known only by the 
Father, as the Father was fully known only by the 
Son. It might even be held that he only so far declared 
himself as he needed to do in each new position; 
waiting until "after he should suffer," so that he 
might come again as "the Lord, the Spirit" to say the 
"many things" he could not say about himself during 
his life. The reserve of his utterance about his own 
consciousness is a remarkable feature in his earthly 
teachings. 

5. Of very great importance is the impression made 
by the sacred records on the Christian centuries as they 
have studied the story of Jesus. We will keep in mind 
our specific subject — the virgin birth of our Lord — 
but the whole life bears on the question of its begin- 
ning. The profound impression upon the ages of his 
whole career, made up as it is of a birth that so fitly 
introduces such a unique childhood and is followed so 
fittingly by so wonderful a manhood, is manifest. 
These show breadth rather than narrowness, extension 
rather than limitation, fullness of adaptation rather 
than scantiness of moral measure. 

It is a well-known principle in passing judgment on 
any man illustrious in human history, that we grant 
him our praise as he excels not only in one thing but 
in many; and the man who reconciles harmoniously 
the widest extremes and unites happily the most 



How Jesus Came to Us. 125 

opposite excellencies is really the greatest character. 
In the resolutions presented to the American Congress 
at the death of Washington it was said, "He was first 
in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his 
countrymen." It was much to be "first in war," when 
every private felt that he could command an entire 
army. It was much to be "first in peace" when, at the 
close of the war, every man had his own plan for 
establishing a government. It was even more to be 
"first in the hearts of his countrymen" when so many 
deserved the plaudits of the new nation. But to excel 
at the same time in each of these respects, and to 
assemble and combine them all in one great character — 
that was the greatest of achievements and deserving 
of the utmost praise a nation could give. So in judg- 
ing of the moral heroes of sacred story we give praise 
to the men whose largeness covers diverse qualities. 
And the impression that Jesus makes on the ages is 
that of a breadth that gathers unto itself all excel- 
lencies. Held before to be so far apart that the dis- 
tance could not be spanned, yet, in some inexplicable 
way, these glories have been perfected, exhibited, and 
blended in him. 

We find him born of humanity, laid in a manger, 
knowing the wants of life exactly as we know them. 
He needed sleep to refresh him, and food to nourish 
his body ; and looking on these things alone, one would 
say that he was a man; indeed, the apostle calls him 
"the man Christ Jesus." But the facts pointing toward 
another conclusion are not less evident: he is called 



126 Advent and Ascension. 

"the Mighty God," "the Everlasting Father." 1 "By 
him were all things made." 2 And every work ascribed 
to the Father is also ascribed to the Son. Looking at 
these things alone, one would say that he is the very 
God. But the most remarkable thing is the strange 
way in which these facts are set over against each 
other, presenting us with a character so thoroughly at 
one with itself that instead of discord there is a kind 
of lofty harmony. Though his first lowly bed is a 
manger, yet in the name of their God bright angels 
announce his birth. Though a mere child, yet a star, 
unseen before, guides inquiring sages to his humble 
abode. He submitted as a man to be baptized, but 
while emerging from the sacred stream there came a 
voice from heaven saying "Thou art my beloved Son ; 
in thee I am well pleased." 3 In the wilderness he 
hungered, and then, when a little time had gone, he 
fed assembled thousands with the bread of miracle. 
He rested his aching head on a hard pillow in a rude 
fishing boat, but when awakened he bade the wind be 
still, and the sea to cease its raging, and they obeyed. 
He walks a weary journey, and just before its end he 
raises from the dead the son of the widow of Nain. 
He wept at the tomb of Lazarus, but he raised him 
from the grave — offering the prayer of submission in 
the same breath with the word of command. To his 
disciples he gave constantly the proofs of his humanity, 
and yet he said, "Before Abraham was, I am," and he 
urged that no inferior honor be given to himself than 

x Isa. ix, 6. a Johni, 3. 3 Matt. iii, 17. 



How Jesus Came to Us. 127 

to his Father, God. He wept in Gethsemane, but in 
that garden was performed one of the last miracles of 
his life. Upon the cross he uttered the language of 
humanity in commending his mother to a disciple's 
care, but he turned to the dying thief and spoke for 
him a pardon which none but God can bestow. He 
dies, but the veil of the temple is rent and the earth 
shudders at his expiring groan. He is buried in a 
human tomb, but angels guard the spot and he rises 
— no more to die. He walks the highway to Emmaus, 
but vanishes from the disciples after proof of his res- 
urrection is given. With his disciples he climbs Olivet, 
but hardly is the act accomplished before he is received 
up out of their sight into the blue depths of the 
heavens. After his ascension his inspired disciples 
speak of him as one who learned obedience, but one in 
whom dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. 
They tell of his manhood, and yet they invoke him in 
solemn prayer. They speak of his life as our example, 
but they commend their souls to him with their dying 
breath. In the baptismal formula they join his name 
with that of the Father, and in the apostolic benedic- 
tions they bless in the name of both. And if, as we 
have said, his is the greatest character who unites the 
widest extremes and harmonizes the greatest contrasts, 
then the character of Jesus is wonderful beyond all 
measure. And yet, in all the wonderfulness, he is 
never a monstrosity, but always a man — even when 
he is so evidently, also, more than a man. 

These sharp contrasts so happily blended are the 



128 Advent and Ascension. 

material from which some theory of our Lord's peculiar 
nature must be drawn; a fact — let us keep in mind — 
of great value in the study of the beginnings of 
his Incarnation. 

Let us see what we may determine as to his nature. 
Only four inferences are possible: If we shall say, 
looking on one class of facts, that he is only divine, 
there remain a large class of facts of which no account 
can be given. If we shall say, on the other hand, that 
he is only human, one equally large class of facts re- 
main not included in the theory. If we shall say he 
was superhuman only, neither human nor divine, but 
in some way superior to man and inferior to God, 
then what becomes of both classes of facts, neither of 
which is accounted for in this hypothesis? These 
three theories of Christ's nature set aside, as not cover- 
ing the facts, one more remains : that the Person whom 
we know as Jesus Christ was the God-man; the Son 
of God becoming the Son of man, "God manifested in 
the flesh." And this conclusion reconciles and combines 
both classes of texts — those which speak of him as 
God and those which speak of him as man. The 
question is not whether this is or is not explicable. 
We bow before it as the divine mystery. But we must 
not so hold the revealed fact as to make the divinity 
absorb the humanity, or the humanity the divinity, nor 
yet so as to claim a double consciousness in the one 
Person, our Lord Jesus Christ; nor need we hold to 
two natures separately existing side by side, now one 
acting and now the other. Yet the whole mode in 



How Jesus Came to Us. 129 

which this incarnation was accomplished must always 
baffle us. Human reason has no plummet that can 
sound the depths of God. There were those who once 
felt that the impassibility of God forbade any words 
about the divine nature as suffering. There were 
those who held that there could be no self-deprivation 
of the divine attributes, no self-renunciation of any 
divine perfection ; not even a voluntary self-limitation. 
But all this was to limit God's power to limit himself, 
and so it actually affirmed in one direction what it 
denied in another. Whether it is necessary to call in 
the idea of self-limitation or not, some have questioned. 
The phrase frequently used about "the limitations of 
humanity" as applied to our Lord needs to be employed 
with great caution. God self-limited — limited by him- 
self in the exercise of his attributes — is a widely differ- 
ent conception from God limited by humanity — God 
limited by man. Indeed, what has been claimed as 
limitation in the case of Christ is really extension to 
the conditions of men. 1 He was able to extend his 
being so as to become babe, child, man. He reached 
out and came into every variety of human experience. 
It may be considered as an expansion rather than a 
contraction, an enlargement rather than a reduction. 



1 "The objector [to the divinity of Christ because God is narrowed 
and restricted in incarnation as man] is denying to God the power of 
appearing in human form; of revealing himself in the terms of hu- 
manity. A God thus incapable would be the most impotent and useless 
being conceivable. He would be no God at all; he would be a mere 
name, and his attributes resolve themselves into negations. Greatness 
depends on limitations. In denying him the possibility of manifestation 
in limitations we reduce him to an abstract being, which is the same as 
nothing." — President Hyde of Bowdoin, in Social Theology. 

9 



130 Advent and Ascension. 

It is the condescension of Divinity to care for the 
lowliest. Infinite greatness is shown in the greatness 
of care for minutest objects. Jesus was able to die, 
showing thereby his power; God was seen in self- 
sacrifice at the cross; and these were not limitations 
but divine extensions toward our human needs. In 
The Gospel for an Age of Doubt Dr. van Dyke has a 
chapter with a title that seems almost daring — "The 
Human Life of God." In it he sums up the New Tes- 
tament teaching in this way: "1. God is not such a 
being, absolute, immutable, and impassible, that the 
Divine Logos cannot descend by a free act of self- 
determining love into the lower estate of human 
existence and humble himself to the conditions of man- 
hood, without losing his personal identity. 2. The 
essence of the gospel is its declaration of the fact that 
this act of condescension, of self-humiliation, has 
actually been performed, and that Jesus Christ is the 
eternal Son of God, who has taken upon him the 
existence-form of a servant and lived a truly human 
life and been obedient even unto death in order to 
reveal to the world the saving love of God." And this 
newer emphasis on "the philosophy of being" by no 
means sets aside the older inquiries concerning the 
nature — the twofold nature — of Jesus Christ, who was 
manifested as one perfect Person. The newer concep- 
tion is so far from being a substitute for the older that 
it only makes more of the vitality, while not setting 
aside in any degree the deeper ethical and the judi- 
cial relations of God to man, for which it is simply 



How Jesus Came to Us. 131 

preparatory. But the new stress laid on vitality in 
describing the nature of our Lord is also stress 
upon the fact of the divine outreach and adaptation 
rather than the divine limitation when God becomes 
man. 

But the statements of alleged restriction are made, 
and not without some degree of plausibility, in the 
presence of Christ's great confession of ignorance con- 
cerning the day and hour of his second advent. 1 This, 
it is claimed, shows clearly a limitation of some sort. 
Let us suppose this to be granted. The further ques- 
tion is whether this is a limitation of his essential 
nature or simply a limitation of his position and official 
relation. If the latter, it is to be considered rather as 
an extension of himself to his work than as any limita- 
tion whatsoever. Rightly we have discarded the view 
that sometimes he spoke as simply and only man; as 
really so as if Godhead were absent. That theory at- 
tempts to explain a difficulty by creating others far 
harder to meet. If there be limitation here it need not 
be limitation by his humanity. It would at most be 
that other limitation — God's limitation by himself. But 
do we need any limitation of the divine nature in this 
case ? Will not the limitations of position and of office 
go farther than any other explanation to account for 
his words on that occasion? Suppose we conceive of 
our Lord as always knowing at any time all he needed 
to know in his mission at that time. Was he for that 
moment in need of knowing about the time of his 

1 Matt, xxiv, 36; Mark xiii, 32. 



132 Advent and Ascension. 

second advent? If not needing that knowledge in his 
unique position at that hour, the limitation is not a 
limitation of either the one or the other nature, but 
solely that of a peculiar relation then borne by him. 
This kind of limitation — if it be proper to call it a 
limitation rather than, as it is in another point of view, 
an adaptation — will help us in looking more closely at 
the Lord's earliest days, those of his earliest childhood 
when in Mary's arms. It would be easy to cite from 
theologians who claim omniscience and omnipotence 
for Jesus, not only in babyhood but for the months just 
before his birth. But all this ignores the fundamental 
idea of adaptation to his position as child, as youth, as 
man. The ''self -beggary" extended to the whole 
position he was to assume as well as to the nature he 
took upon himself. All he needed to know and do, as 
babe or as man, he knew and did; all he needed to 
fill out his mission, as well in the manger as in any 
grandest miracle, was his at that point of his work. 
The outreach of being needed in order to be born, to 
live, and to die, was shown. The amplitude to fill 
cradle or throne was manifested in Jesus Christ. Lord 
he was, but he was to be Lord in childhood, Lord in 
manhood, Lord in time, and Lord in eternity- ; as able 
to fill the servant's place as the Master's. The differ- 
ence between condescending to become the "child 
Jesus*' or to become the '"man Jesus" vanishes when 
we think of the heavenly throne he left. But it is con- 
ceivable that, in both positions, he knew all he needed 
to know, felt all he needed to feel, and did all he needed 



How Jesus Came to Us. 133 

to do. One need only be equal to one's position, 
whether he be God or man; nor, so far as we can un- 
derstand, is there any other rule of judging when God 
becomes man in Jesus Christ. 

Summing up with great care the whole biblical 
"gospel of the Infancy," Godet, after a concise state- 
ment of the objections alleged thereto in the whole 
history of criticism, says : "The miraculous birth is 
immediately and closely connected with the perfect 
holiness of Christ which is the basis of Christianity; 
so much so that whoever denies the former must neces- 
sarily deny the latter ; and whoever accepts the second 
cannot fail to fall back on the first, which is indeed 
implied in it." 1 

The event of the Incarnation, as we have seen, 2 is 
demanded alike by human minds and by human hearts. 
It involved the idea not of a newly created man, but of 
one to be born into our race. It involved great ques- 
tions of an after-life proceeding from such a beginning. 
The Coming One was not to be simply a man filled in 
soul with the Holy Spirit, as inspired prophets had 
been. He must not be God in man, not man in God, 
not God and man, but God becoming man, in any real 
incarnation. He must meet these profoundest needs 
when he should appear. 

1 Commentary on Luke, p. 102. For a full, frank, comprehensive dis- 
cussion of all the questions involved in the "Infancy" of our Lord the 
reader is referred to Godet. One need not agree at every point with 
him in order to feel the general completeness of his presentation and 
to accept his firm conclusions. Holding that the historicity of the 
Infancy is proved as it stands all alone, he does not fail to see how 
the whole Incarnation-life bears on the Incarnate birth, 

2 Chapter i, 



134 Advent and Ascension. 

We saw 1 also that our oldest Christian documents 
about the Incarnate One were the earlier Epistles of 
Paul ; antedating thus, in documentary order, the sub- 
sequent Gospels which were to give the historical order 
and the more detailed story of the birth, life, miracles, 
teaching, death, and resurrection of the Lord. We saw 
how the early preachers bore oral witness to the facts 
in outline, and with the attending Holy Spirit mul- 
titudes of converts were gathered into the churches to 
which these apostles addressed their inspired Epistles. 
Thus the whole scope and spirit of the gospel, its inner 
meaning, its rich doctrinal significance, and the experi- 
ential power of the Incarnation, taken as a whole — all 
these were considered in their bearing on the event of 
the Infancy; the entire Incarnation proceeding from 
the event of the virgin birth. 

We saw, again, in an examination of the historical 
Gospels, the abundance of the material from which 
Matthew and Luke drew their narratives; their care- 
fulness as well as their minuteness and their compre- 
hension; their whole tone and spirit as each for his 
own purposes marshaled the facts. We saw how all 
the elements of the problem were met in Jesus Christ. 
Apostolic testimony uncontradicted, the fact of the 
virgin birth wrought into the very substance of Chris- 
tianity as was declared in sermon and Epistle, and 
this corroborated by evangelical narrative — these 
things give to the world a complete presentation of the 
unique character of him who was God incarnate in 

1 Chapter ii. 



How Jesus Came to Us. 135 

man. It was thus that he became one of us, and at the 
same time filled out the full measure of the divine idea 
of revealing God to us. 

And the moral argument drawn from the whole 
broad scope of the sacred Scriptures may be considered 
as an addition to the special proof of the special fact 
of the virgin birth of our Lord. Careful students of 
the Scripture, taken as a whole, are profoundly im- 
pressed with the unity of the sacred volume. It has 
various expression of one great thought. They trace 
it through all the varying literature of all the long ages 
in which its books came to be the one Book. It may 
be true that it is not always and on all subjects safe to 
argue from the general to the specific, but, on the other 
hand, there are subjects on which that form of argu- 
ment is not only safe but is especially pertinent and 
satisfactory. There are things that have in them a 
certain harmony with the great principles that may be 
under discussion, with certain great methods under- 
taken and great objects sought. Take, for instance, 
the great yearnings of the best men in their best 
moments for the knowledge of something beyond the 
finite and the limited and the changeable; for some 
substance that casts this finite shadow. Here in the 
Bible, taken as a whole, is the revelation of the infinite 
in an infinite God. These "infinite convictions" in us 
which ally us to something beyond the finite, these 
yearnings to lay hold of the absolute and real, and 
which constitute the true dignity and worth of our 
human nature, are the indications that somewhere and 



136 Advent and Ascension, 

in some One there is a satisfaction for them. They 
have even been cited as proof of the existence of God. 1 
But now and here we claim that peculiarly in the God 
of the Bible — of the Bible taken as a whole — these 
yearnings and convictions find perfect satisfaction. 
For they find in the God of the Bible not only an in- 
finite God existing, but an infinitely righteous God, and 
this God sending out from his heaven "J esus Christ the 
Righteous." So that the three "infinite yearnings" 
of noblest souls in their noblest moments, these 
yearnings for perfect Infinitude, for perfect Righteous- 
ness, and for perfect Love in some one Being, are 
exactly met for these souls in this God of the Bible, 
and in its culminating fact of God revealed as "Jesus 
Christ born of a woman, born under the law." "No 
man hath seen God at any time ; the only begotten Son, 
which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared 
him." 

It is true that careful thinkers have arrived at a 
belief in an infinite God apart from the scriptural 
Incarnation. Starting with the finite, they have 
eliminated, as far as the human mind can do it, the ele- 
ments of time and space and of any limitation whatso- 
ever. This is a negative approach to a negative result. 
They find out what God is not, and the residuum of the 
labored process is to them what God is. At best this 



1 "At first sight it seems extravagant to speak of man's nature as 
containing an 'infinite element,' but there is in us that which rises 
above the limits of time and space, and this is the reproduction or re- 
flection of God's own eternal consciousness and life." — Caird, Funda- 
mental Ideas of Christianity, p. 179. 



How Jesus Came to Us. 137 

is only an escape from those who would argue for a 
denial of the divine existence. We may indeed be 
permitted to take that method of reply to objections. 
To some minds the result has its intellectual satisfac- 
tions. But there is another way that satisfies all minds 
and all hearts. The Bible revelations give us one God, 
infinite not only in being but in all attributes and all 
perfections. He is utterly unlike, in quantity and 
quality of being, the gods of the peoples surrounding 
the Hebrew nation. They were tribal gods; at most, 
national gods. He, while peculiarly the God of a 
chosen nation, was also God of the whole earth, from 
the very outset of scriptural story. Then came the 
steady development of the original idea of the one 
only God; and at length the whole grand concep- 
tion gathered itself into a realization. Had it been 
the mere development of great and good men, the 
series going on would have given us, by this twen- 
tieth century, men far surpassing Jesus. But Jesus, 
the Incarnate One, peculiarly born, peculiarly mani- 
fested as "the Only Begotten Son of the Father," is 
a realization wholly unlike that of a developed hu- 
man being. The unique beginning as given us by the 
evangelists is in harmony with the Transfiguration 
midway in his career, and with the Resurrection at 
its close. It belongs to the biblical conception. It 
suits the gospel story taken as a whole. The statue 
was cast in a single piece. The incident of the virgin 
birth, so far from being an excrescence, is a neces- 
sity unto any completed idea of a life with such a 



138 Advent and Ascension. 

career and such a mission. Without it there would 
be a distinct hiatus. Without it there would be a con- 
spicuous lack, and a thousand important questions must 
always be unanswered. It would be hard to have any 
unified conception of Jesus himself, or of his career 
as having a beginning and a middle and an ending. It 
is necessary to the whole idea of Jesus as the one pre- 
dicted in prophecy and described in gospel. It belongs 
to his life. It befits the broad conception of the Bible 
taken as a whole. The idea meets every variety of 
mind. Philosophical reasoners, dealing with idea of the 
infinite, need the peculiar manifestation of the Jesus 
born at Bethlehem, lest their whole idea should be cold 
and unsympathetic. Abstract thinkers need the fact of 
Jesus as the Only Begotten of the Father, and as one 
taking upon himself our human nature, that their con- 
ception should come to have the vigor of objective 
actuality. Plainest men, not philosophically inclined, 
also need it as a simple historic fact when they ask, 
as all men must, how Jesus came to us. And so for all 
students of divine truth there is the beginning of 
Genesis and the beginning in the Gospel. Faith re- 
ceives the fact, "In the beginning was the Word, and 
the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." 

The aim in these chapters has been to set forth dis- 
tinctly the historic truth about the advent of Jesus 
Christ to the world ; to show not only that there has 
been an Incarnation but that it was of a certain definite 
kind, with its fit beginning and its strongly marked 



How Jesus Came to Us. 139 

incidents which foretold a well-defined consummation ; 
to show that specific facts of the utmost possible moral 
value were presented to the world, and for them not 
only historic but moral and spiritual belief was de- 
manded; that, since "we have not followed cunningly 
devised fables," all indefiniteness and indecision are 
unwarranted; that the facts are facts in themselves, 
and are true even apart from any moral impression 
they may make on any man's mind and heart ; that we 
may not "omit all question of their truthfulness or un- 
truthfulness" and use them as we sometimes use the 
Greek or Roman myths — such myths considered as 
having a certain worth as "value- judgments" on moral 
questions; that now these things of the incarnate 
Christ are the veritable realities on which we are war- 
ranted in building our present faith and our eternal 
hope ; that the foundations of our Christianity are not 
speculative, metaphysical, or yet subjective, but are 
objective historical facts given to us, sometimes in 
narrative statement, and sometimes in the alternate but 
equally trustworthy form of doctrinal statement, alike 
in Gospels and Epistles. Speculative opinion, meta- 
physical disquisition, and subjective experience, to 
have any worth, must have their foundation in Chris- 
tian fact that can be historically proved. This is the 
logical order. We must be careful not to put buttress 
in the place of foundation. 

Unfortunately, there are good men who look with 
suspicion upon all that seems to be supernatural. The 
Christian facts, starting with the supernatural in the 



140 Advent and Ascension. 

virgin birth, and proceeding with the supernatural in the 
works of our Lord and in his words more wonderful 
than his works, and showing themselves in the glories 
of transfiguration and resurrection, awaken in some 
minds a degree of distrust. But let us remember that 
a fact is a fact in and of itself, all apart from any 
inference we may draw from it as a natural or as a 
supernatural event. The proof of the fact is one thing, 
and our inference, if we draw any inference at all, is 
quite another. We may infer that it is simply natural. 
We may infer that it is supernatural. We may regard 
it as partly the one and partly the other. But there 
stands the fact all the same on its own merits, with its 
own proof. In the interests of clear thinking let us 
separate the proof of the fact from our inferences. 
We must have no prejudice against a fact because, in 
our human judgment upon it, we deem it supernatural. 
Nor does it throw open the door to all the alleged 
miracles of the subsequent centuries, if, these facts 
about an incarnate Christ once proved, we are obliged 
logically to claim that some of them clearly rise to the 
height of the supernatural. And we should be the 
more ready to cast out all prejudice against the super- 
natural because, in some cases, the line between the 
natural and the supernatural is not very easily drawn. 
In the case of many miracles — some would say in the 
case of all miracle — the supernatural is simply the 
natural worked more intensely; the natural side is 
continually evident in the Incarnation, and sometimes 
the supernatural side is as evident. There is the 



How Jesus Came to Us. 141 

human motherhood at the Lord's birth as well as the 
divine paternity. There are the five loaves and the 
few small fishes as well as the twelve basketfuls after 
the multitude have eaten. Water tends to cleanse the 
diseased eye, but the miracle is that the water of Siloam 
cures the blind man at Christ's word. It is better to 
dismiss all prejudice against either side, and to look 
fairly at the facts presented for our faith in the authen- 
ticated records of Christ's birth and career. 

And there are those whose theory about "all human 
language as inexact" leads them to indefiniteness and 
distrust about the Incarnation. It is, of course, true 
that human language has defects and limitations, but 
for all the purposes of practical life it serves us a good 
turn. It is exact enough for a legally drawn will con- 
veying millions of property, and for a physician's pre- 
scription when human life is at stake ; for the very 
careful statements of science and the exact definitions 
of mathematics. For a man to press unduly the fact 
of possible error in human language is to deprive his 
own proposition about error of any meaning that is 
worthy of our consideration. That Jesus in the 
Gospels makes dogmatic statements, and that the 
apostles do the same in their Epistles, is very evident. 
And yet a distinguished writer, discoursing on the 
fallibility of human language, questions whether 
"Christian truth can be offered in the molds of any 
dogmatic statement." 1 This theory of language, as 

1 Bushnell's Theory of Language, as quoted by Theodore J. Munger, 
p. 105. 



142 Advent and Ascension. 

applicable to biblical language as to all other human 
language, leaves us in doubt about any definiteness 
of any word or deed of Jesus. It enables one to deny 
or to affirm any proposition of mental science or moral 
statement wherever found. Matthew and Luke, in the 
story of the virgin birth and of the subsequent career 
of our Lord, leave no doubt of their clear conception 
of the historic facts, and they show that they can use 
words definitely enough to describe their belief. All 
the world knows what they meant to say. Let us not, 
in studying the story of the Incarnation as they record 
it, adopt a "theory of language" that will make their 
record mean anything or nothing — a theory that would 
make any fact or truth in any department of human 
knowledge to become uncertain, indefinite, and unin- 
fluential. Let us not obscure by this needless mist the 
wonderfully transparent story of the evangelists. God 
thought it worth while to send his Son in human form, 
and the Son of God thought it worth while to use our 
human language when he was with us, and he ex- 
pected to be fairly understood. He promised aid to 
his immediate followers to lead them into all truth 
about what he had said, and about those "many things" 
he had to say unto them which they could not "bear" 
at that time. 1 We are not, under the specious plea of 
going deeper than words and deeds, to lay ourselves 
open to the charge of skimming the surface rather 
than finding the depths. If this theory of the fallibility 
of human language was originally devised and em- 

1 John xvi, 12. 



How Jesus Came to Us. 143 

ployed in theological discussion to escape from un- 
desired doctrines, the fact that it has been so applied 
as to stultify the plain story of the Incarnation should 
make us hesitate to use it. The clear-cut words of the 
apostles when speaking of our Lord, and of our Lord 
himself when quoting facts and declarations found in 
the Old Testament Scriptures, warrant us in holding 
that the definite New Testament words are given us 
for our definite belief. 

There are, again, good men who, with the best 
motives, as a matter of religious strategy in dealing 
with those who doubt, have proposed to suppress for 
the time, without positively denying them, the full 
significance and even the reality of the more objec- 
tionable Christian facts. They justify to themselves 
this polemical method under the persuasion that, if they 
can induce a man to look at some few of these facts, 
the power of "the personality of Jesus" will so rise 
upon the man's vision that he will be persuaded to 
"go on" and acknowledge the Incarnation in its super- 
natural aspects. We may honor the motive of such 
men, in thus seeking to defend Christianity, while dis- 
trusting their method. The danger is obvious in this 
polemic. To say nothing of the apparent lack of 
straightforwardness, sure to be detected by a shrewd 
objector, and the danger that he will not "go on," but 
will react into a denial of both the natural and the 
supernatural in the Incarnation, there is also, as the 
results have abundantly shown, the very greatest 
danger to the man who uses this strategy. It is al- 



144 Advent and Ascension. 

ways dangerous to consider truth not for truth's sake 
but merely as a polemic. Attempting to lift another by 
letting one's self down is dangerous to both. Surely, 
the best way to promote truth is not to suppress it. 
And a man easily comes to think of the part he uses 
as the whole of the truth itself. The habit of advoca- 
ting Christianity in this way has led some good men to 
borrow, from a philosophy now nearly gone by, a 
"theory of knowledge" in which the reality of truth is 
suppressed by what are called "value-judgments." In 
other words, the truthfulness of truth is made to de- 
pend upon its value or usefulness. What it is worth 
for moral impression is the determining thing in seek- 
ing for the truth. Thus, all unconsciously, a man 
comes to believe in himself, in his own experience of 
the worth or usefulness of an alleged truth, rather than 
in the Christ who is "the Truth." These personal 
"value-judgments" come to be the most important 
thing; and, as probably no two men would agree on 
these "value- judgments," truth to one man is error to 
another; the truth itself being the shuttlecock tossed 
hither and yon in the logical game. "The cognitions 
of religion," says Ritschl, "are wholly Value- judg- 
ments.' " So that some good men, arguing with an 
opponent, have even said that it is no matter what we 
believe about the alleged facts, say of the old Testa- 
ment, if we can only get the moral impression of the 
story. They have said that it is no matter if Abraham 
never lived, or if David and Isaiah are only imaginary 
men; the "moral value" of the story being its worth 



How Jesus Came to Us. 145 

to us. What wonder that the opponent has sometimes 
turned the tables and compelled the would-be believer 
to own that one might waive the historic facts about 
Christ's life, and that good men, after using this dan- 
gerous form of apologetic in discussion about Chris- 
tian doctrine, have been forced to evaporate the story 
of Christ in the Gospels, part after part, and treat it as 
only "ideally true"! They have claimed that even 
then, when fact has been dissolved, they could see "a 
great emerging Personality without any historic detail 
whatsoever." They would retain no incident to which 
any man objects. One might indeed ask, when a man 
proposes to get behind all the words and works of 
Jesus, behind all the story of the Gospels and Epistles, 
what there remains out of which to construct this 
rising Personality. All we really know of any worth 
about Jesus is found in these Scripture writings which 
it is proposed to relegate to the realm of indefiniteness. 
The Roman Church has done this with the real Mary, 
the mother of the Lord, and there has emerged an 
"ideal" Mary utterly unlike the Mary of the Gospels. 
Now, when one has dissolved either by suppression or 
denial, the historic Christ, what can emerge save an 
ideal Christ? And some have strangely claimed that 
this emerging ideal has drawn out their hearts toward 
Christ far more fervently than the "crass idea of the 
evangelists." But it is evident that the Christ they 
thus magnify and praise is not God's Christ but man's ; 
is simply the subjective Christ of their own souls. 
Like the Romanist in the case of Mary, they are in 
10 



146 Advent and Ascension. 

danger of worshiping their own conception ; of adoring 
their own imagination rather than Christ. If any 
shred of the Christ of the Gospels remains out of 
which to construct this Christ, it is evident that there 
will be distortion in place of the glorious symmetry 
of the Christ of the written word. One, with Tolstoi, 
may build, as he does in some of his volumes, solely on 
the Sermon on the Mount, forgetful that this wonder- 
ful sermon is not gospel but only a grand restatement 
of moral law. In such a case distortion is the certain 
result. It is the same when one takes only the divine 
in Christ's career and not the human, or goes to the 
other extreme of taking the human and suppressing 
the divine; when one takes only his precept and not 
his doctrine; when one sees only the ethical and not 
the redemptive utterances and aspects. A man may 
make a socialistic Christ only or a philanthropic Christ 
only. This is the danger of all such arbitrary sub- 
jectivity. In every such case the man's Christ is not 
"the Christ of God." When the basal idea is the 
"practical effects," the "value- judgments," "the unique 
ideal of the Lord rising above all historic presentations 
of it even by the evangelists," a man is clearly drawing 
on his imagination for his facts. The truth of the 
truth rather than the usefulness of the truth is the main 
thing to be considered. Some one truth of the Gospels, 
and in some circumstances, may not be perceived to 
be useful at all; its worth as a "value- judgment" may 
for a time be very little. A man may not have come 
up to it yet in his growing experience. All thoughtful 



How Jesus Came to Us. 147 

Christians can recall certain doctrinal utterances of the 
Scriptures that, as very young Christians, they would 
have been glad not to have true ; but middle life in its 
larger experience has brought them on to where these 
truths, once judged by " value- judgment" as useless, 
if not harmful, have become of greatest worth. They 
learned to take some facts and truths on trust and 
wait ; and they have found the value of the things they 
would have discarded had not these been clearly taught 
by our Lord. The usefulness of a truth to a man is 
only a single feature of it. 

But there is one thing that deserves to be con- 
sidered: truth is for God's use. It is for his good as 
one who would reveal himself to man. By it he wishes 
to be understood. Truth in itself is absolute. God 
is truth. Jesus said, "I am the truth." Truth exists 
all apart from any human "value-judgment" about it, 
and apart from any usefulness of it to us. If the final 
decision about truth — this of the Incarnation, or any 
other — is made up "solely on one's value- judgment," 
then if a thing is not advantageous to a specific man 
he ought to reject it. Truth no more is a reality, but 
a subjective impression. This opens the way to an 
unbridled fanaticism in some minds, and, equally, to 
an icy intellectualism in other minds. This is to make 
a revelation, through outward historic fact divinely 
authorized in its record, not only needless but impos- 
sible. The appeal to reason for proof of fact is super- 
seded by intellectual or moral subjectivity. 

But is there no appeal to anything in us except to 



148 Advent and Ascension. 

the reason as it judges of outward Christian facts? 
Certainly; for there is the appeal, for purely ethical 
truth, to the intuitions God has put into our souls. 
To this intuitional sense of the right, expressed by the 
human conscience, Jesus constantly appealed. But 
these intuitions, native to the soul, are for ethical truth 
rather than for historic fact. No amount of the ethical 
intuition we popularly call conscience can tell us 
whether Christ preexisted, whether he was born in 
the manger, died on the cross, and rose on the third 
day. Here, in these distinctive Christian facts, the 
appeal is to the reason to take into account the historic 
proof of objective events. For Christianity claims to 
be a series of objective facts carrying with them, by 
an inexorable logic, certain conclusions of Christian 
doctrine. These doctrines are logical verities from the 
facts, and are exactly as veritable as the facts them- 
selves. It may even be said that the factual statement 
and the exact logical or doctrinal statement are simply 
different ways of presenting the same thing. These 
Christian facts tend to awaken and strengthen the 
intuitions of our moral nature. There is, on one side 
of them, the ethical appeal to our ethical nature. But 
this is very far from being the all or even the main 
thing about our Christianity. No great fact of our 
historical Christianity can be settled solely or even 
principally by the ethical appeal. It addresses a wholly 
different part of our nature. If Christianity were 
simply a system of rational ethics touched up into new 
vigor by the teachings of Jesus, the appeal would be 



How Jesus Came to Us. 149 

only to our ethical instincts ; but there was a thousand- 
fold more of mere ethical teaching in the world before 
God sent Jesus than the world had ever practiced. 
Ethics, even when supplemented by the idea of God, 
as in the case of the Jews, only added to men's sense 
of sin; only added to the unbearable burden of hu- 
man condemnation ; only gave a "fearful looking for" 
of the divine judgment. The foundations of the new 
Christianity must be objective. In a late opinion of the 
Supreme Court occurs the following sentence, as true 
of Christianity as of science: "Civil proceedings in 
court are not scientific investigations, the end of which 
always must be objective truth." 1 

And these objective Christian facts under the power 
of the Holy Spirit, through our belief in them, induce 
what is called "the Christian experience." Set home by 
this Spirit, they beget Christian feeling. They give 
birth to Christian principle. They compel to Christian 
action. And, while these facts give new importance 
to merely ethical obligations, the great thing is that a 
wholly new series of distinctively Christian duties at 
once emerge and enter their unceasing claim on the 
mind and heart and life. Take the first distinguishing 
duty of Christianity as presented by Christ, that of 
belief in himself. Of course, belief is not, in itself, an 
ethical duty. Faith is not made a virtue in any one 
of the Ten Commandments. Faith is an act of the 
reason in the presence of truth, and, through the rea- 

1 Dowden, in his Puritan and Anglican Studies in Literature, quotes 
Richard Baxter as claiming that "the subjective certainty cannot go 
beyond the objective evidence." 



150 Advent and Ascension. 

son, an act of the soul. Something is given to be 
believed. The proof of Christianity as a distinguish- 
ing series of objective facts, beginning with the Incar- 
nation, is presented to men for their faith. Thus the 
objective becomes, in Christian experience, the sub- 
jective. And this experience could have no reality 
apart from the reality of the facts which induce it. 
The impression on the paper is that which is made by 
the types. And thus, while the objective facts, in the 
appeal they make to the mind and heart, are the care- 
fully laid foundations of our Christian religion, the 
result of believing them is the quickening and satis- 
faction of our natural moral instincts, and also the 
production of a profound Christian experience which 
is strengthened by added belief. 

Each utterance of Jesus is a demand for faith; not 
a general faith, but a faith in that special truth. When 
at the Supper he says, "My blood, shed for many 
for the remission of sins," it is a dogmatic statement 
of atoning fact neither to be suppressed nor denied 
without blame. It is to be taken and believed on his 
authority. And when in the clearest possible language 
he claims that he preexisted, it is of importance that a 
man should not, under peril of sin against his Saviour 
and Master, hesitate to receive the fact on the Lord's 
testimony, and to give God and his only begotten Son 
the glory due to the Sender and to the One sent from 
his native heaven. When Jesus claims that he "came 
forth from the Father," and apostles claim that he 
"humbled himself," "took upon him our nature," "was 



How Jesus Came to Us. 151 

born of a woman," "the Word was made flesh, and we 
beheld his glory," there are but two ways of treating 
such testimony: that of a rejection which involves 
guilt, or that of a belief which is acceptable unto God. 
As these facts are dwelt upon by the consecrated 
mind and heart they steadily grow in their evidential 
value. The more they are understood the more their 
glory is manifested to devoutly studious souls. It 
comes, by and by, to be seen and felt that these things 
of Christ's life and death, with all they involve, cannot 
but be true. That virgin birth so fit as the opening 
event of such a career, and that supernatural resurrec- 
tion as the closing earthly event so correspond to each 
other, and that transfiguration in which for an hour, 
midway in his career, he resumed the glory of the 
upper world — these three great mountain tops of 
sacred events lift themselves up, and in so doing lift 
up also all events between them ! It is Mount Wash- 
ington with its neighboring mountains lifting not only 
all the lesser hills but exalting also all the valleys and 
plains that surround the ranges. These three events 
are in singular harmony with each other. One might 
almost argue from any one of them that it compels the 
remaining two. And each intermediate miracle has 
its exact location and its precise time. No miracle 
of the first year could possibly have occurred in the 
third, and no miracle of the third year could have 
occurred in the first. Each is timed and ordered. 
Each possible only where it occurs is impossible else- 
where. Teaching is carefully ordered in its progres- 



152 Advent and Ascension. 

sion, and is exactly coordinated with the miracle. 
Miracles are not massed. They stand separated in 
time, place, and occasion. They are never freaks of 
power. They are natural for a supernatural life. They 
are never buttresses, but always parts of the structure ; 
and they had to be performed, as the words of the 
Lord had to be spoken. The roundness, the perfect 
symmetry, the sanity of the whole career as depicted 
in Gospel and Epistle for such a person as Jesus Christ, 
the impossibility of adding to the great events without 
perversion, or of suppressing them without evident dis- 
tortion, the delightful sense of the completeness of 
that career for the obvious purpose of it, alike in its 
beginning and its end, in its deeds and its words, in 
its earthly and its heavenly manifestation — this is felt 
more and more as we submit ourselves to the sacred 
potency of the whole grand story of the Incarnation. 

And they make two things very plain: First, that 
such a Person must have lived or he could not thus 
be depicted; and, second, that those who so depicted 
such a career for their Lord must have been divinely 
helped when they drew this divine picture. 



How Jesus Left Us. 153 



HOW JESUS LEFT US. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Questions About the Lord's Departure. 

The earthly career of our Lord in some way is to 
be terminated. How should he be expected to leave 
us? When we remember who he was and what he 
did we are prepared to believe that his departure 
would be as marvelous in its way as his advent had 
been. We might imagine that his Father would snatch 
him from the cross before it was uplifted, and that, 
escaping death, he would resume his native heaven. 
A visible ascension at the moment when Jewish hate 
was about to nail him to the cross, in some respects, 
would seem a fitting conclusion of his earthly mission. 
Some such ending of his career would seem to be a 
divine attestation and would be wonderfully signifi- 
cant. It would be, so we might think, the noblest 
conceivable form for his departure. But for this ascen- 
sion to occur at the time when he was about to suffer 
death, though it would relieve him from the pain and 
shame of dying, would leave certain other most im- 
portant things undone. There could have been no 
prayer on the cross for his murderers to thrill the 
world wherever the story of it is told ; no example of 



154 Advent and Ascension. 

submission when in direst agony; no turning of the 
cross of shame into the cross in which disciples could 
glory; no humiliation of the sepulcher, affording the 
opportunity for the grandest of all possible triumphs 
in a sublime resurrection. He must die. Judging by 
the hate he had awakened in priest and ruler, he must 
die. Judging that his death, according to prophecy, 
had peculiar value in accomplishing man's salvation, he 
must die. Judging, too, by his own words to his dis- 
ciples, he must die. 

But, it being settled that he must die, what should 
follow that death? To some, a permanent rock sep- 
ulcher, with no resurrection and no ascension, is con- 
ceivable. But this leaves out other things that were to 
be accomplished — alike in the prediction of prophet 
and the fulfillment of any complete ideal of the Christ. 
Yet more objectionable is the conception of a grave 
under the rounded sod, on which for a century or two 
the Syrian stars should look down, and then the dust 
of his body become the common dust of the earth. 
There is no fitness, no dignity, no glory in such a con- 
ception as the earthly ending of such a life. Nor is 
the conception any more worthy which would have 
had him rise only in a spiritual resurrection — a resur- 
rection of soul only — and, unnoticed and unknown, 
steal away silently into solitude and then ascend to his 
Father. Scarcely better is the conception which would 
have had him no more mortal, but evermore, in an 
immortal body, with men on this earth. For in that 
case certain things secured to us by an omnipresent 



How Jesus Left Us. 155 

spiritual presence would be sadly lacking. A scheme 
of things that would take in a veritable bodily resur- 
rection, made abundantly evidential, and certified by the 
best witnesses, and this resurrection life having a fair 
continuousness and then its completion in a further 
rising of his body as he ascends to his Father and his 
God — all this would have a certain completeness. 
There would be an ideal ending of the wonderful 
career. Nothing could be more grand than such an 
event in its twofold form of resurrection and ascension. 
In such a case God would be shown as bearing witness 
to the exalted character of his Son; there would be 
the divine testimony to his deeds as wrought in God; 
and as his body should rise into the serene heavens 
there would be visible divine acceptance. The whole 
world would be directed in its gaze to the heaven 
whither he had gone. All he had done and all he had 
said would receive new emphasis, and the ideal would 
be the actual Christ. 

Let us begin our study of this twofold event by 
asking about its possibility and its probability. 

Jesus Christ had a human body like our own. Is 
there in the structure and the uses of the human body 
itself — and so in the body Christ shared with us — both 
capacity and demand for resurrection? Are there in 
the material body existing in a material world, par- 
taking of its peculiar elements and surroundings, in 
this intense life which pervades the physical world in 
its vegetable and animal forms, any premonitions, 
anticipations, suggestions, and adaptations which 



156 Advent and Ascension. 

show not only the possibility but the probability in 
this direction? 

We do not, indeed, know what is the real essence of 
either mind or body. We know only certain phe- 
nomena. But the inference that each exists is war- 
ranted. To the mind belong thought and feeling, con- 
science and will. To the body belong such unlike 
things as hardness and softness, color and weight, 
form and measure. Mind has not one attribute of 
body. Body has not one attribute of mind. It is, then, 
reasonable to believe that the two essences, that of 
mind and that of body, are entirely dissimilar. United 
in some strange way, they have mutual relations. 
Mental and moral exercises are parallel with move- 
ments of the brain substance; but because parallel 
they are not identical; because acting together they 
are not convertible, but only reciprocal. Because cor- 
related they are shown to be separated in substance. 

And the mind of a man is one mind as the body is 
one body. It ought not to be necessary to say that 
during all existence, so far as we know it, the mind is 
one mind; and yet the recent efforts in the line of 
doubt and even of denial as to the reality of the mind, 
and the proposition to substitute therefor "mere states 
of mentality," make it necessary to go over the proofs 
of the fact that the mind is one mind exactly as the 
body is one body. The one fact of the phenomena of 
sleep, which would break the chain were we "mindless, 
and only susceptible of states of mentality" — sleep, out 
of which we wake and resume the old train of think- 



How Jesus Left Us. 157 

ing and know that we ourselves are the same persons 
in mind and in body as before we slept — that one fact 
would seem to settle the whole question. Any attempt 
to show that we have not a real body because of the 
"continuous exercises" of the beating heart and the 
coursing blood and the seeing eye and the hearing ear, 
would be as unreasonable as to urge that "mental ex- 
ercises," because continuous, do not prove the reality 
and separateness of a single mind. The body is not a 
mere "complex of impressions." No more is the mind. 
Each is related to the other, and that each is related 
shows that each is real in itself. Relations are possible 
only in things actually separated. Because each moves 
the other through these relations we hold that each is 
more certainly real. The continuity of both of them, 
until each has done all it can do, is to be expected. 
The soul may be, must be, of higher grade, but they 
belong together; and if by any intervention they are 
separated for a time they still have their immortal 
affinities and there is in them the mutual demand, not 
to say prophecy, for their future immortal union. 

Nor does the fact that one of these two existences is 
usually visible and tangible, while the other is not, 
affect the question of the reality of either. For, even 
of matter, it is certain that many forms of it are sus- 
ceptible of vast changes; their properties for years 
lying unseen, and even unknown, waiting for human 
discovery. So that the unseen is by no means in all 
cases to be relegated to the spiritual. The invisible 
portions of the material universe are just now objects 



158 Advent and Ascension. 

of the most careful study by the world's scholars. The 
air with its gases, the earth with its strange electrical 
forces, are instances of realities in nature which are 
unseen. Facts and forces thrust themselves on us; 
and the correlation of these energies and the changes 
they present while still remaining a part of the same 
physical system of the world are most astonishing. It 
looks as if the metaphysician who wrote over his door, 
"There is nothing great but mind," had made a mis- 
take. Had he written, "There is nothing greater than 
mind," he might have been nearer the truth. The most 
perfect form of matter we know is the human body as 
it is joined with the human soul. Endowed with the 
principle of life, it would seem capable of exhibiting a 
vastly greater range of changes than any form of in- 
animate nature. There may be in it a constitutional 
basis for changing manifestations. Now we see it 
only under one form. It would be strange if, while 
all things having lower kinds of life have capacity for 
wonderful changes, this more wonderful human body 
of ours was confined to the single form of manifesta- 
tion now commonly seen. The possibility of a new 
form of resurrection-life for it may not be safely de- 
nied. With our eye on the varying forms of animate 
and inanimate nature about us, resurrection for the 
body is even more than possible. Does it not even 
reach the degree of probability? The abundant life 
of each returning year is singularly suggestive of 
resurrection for the body. Botanists, surveying life 
broadly, are now claiming that each particular stage 



How Jesus Left Us. 159 

of vegetable life indicates something beyond itself. In 
the original order of creation vegetable life looked for- 
ward to the time when, by one of those "creative eras" 
which foremost geologists are now claiming, animal 
life was to be thrust in upon a prepared planet. Each 
kind of life forges a link as a loop through which runs 
the next link of the continuous chain. All life is unto 
life in some higher form. 

"Spring's real glory lies not in the meaning, 
Gracious though it be of her blue hours ; 

But it is hidden in her tender leaning 
To Summer's richer wealth of flowers." 

In its season of growth the world is full of these sug- 
gestions, these premonitions of a better, even a resur- 
rection, state for man ; and if so, then peculiarly so in 
the case of Him who was to be "the first fruits of them 
that slept." 

There is among these premonitions in nature a 
singular law by which decay and death, though from a 
narrower point of view antagonistic to life, become 
an actual arrangement, on the very broadest scale, for 
the perpetuity of life. 1 The decay of numerous parts 
of any organized structure does not necessarily destroy 
vitality. The decay of autumn enriches life in the long 
run. In many cases autumnal decay insures the con- 
tinuous existence of tree and shrub and flower. Often 
something invisible seems to remain out of which a 
future life is to. come, and next year's spring will see 

1 Dr. Bailey, in The Joys and Sorrows of an Atom, says, "Anything 
that looks like death is but a token and certificate that life is about to 
start anew on another plane." 



160 Advent and Ascension. 

millions of these preparations taking on the forms of 
an actual resurrection. No leaf on any tree but, if 
left to itself to do its work, will prepare to die by pre- 
paring for another life. In the little formation just 
where the leaf joins the twig is the preparation for the 
future. There will be no leaf next year where that 
little rolled-up bract is not found. The symbol of 
resurrection is left on the twig by every dying leaf in 
autumn. 

Is it urged that "in case of the death of all parts of 
the plant there is no resurrection" ? Then the question 
at once rises whether all parts of a plant are ever 
visible ; whether in what we may call death there is not 
something invisible still surviving. That which in 
some plants certainly does survive after all signs are 
gone is an invisible thing. No research can find it. It 
is a life deeper than all the visible death of all the 
visible parts. So that there is a point where both life 
and death pass into invisibility. One might argue 
that it is the same with the human body. All you see 
dies; but do you ever see all? All you can measure 
with any one of the senses dies. Is that all that be- 
longs to the mysterious life of the body? What if 
there is material in every human body belonging to 
that large class of invisible substance which it is 
reasonable to believe forms a part of the physical 
universe? What if there is a surviving germ about 
which at some time the corporeal nature may gather 
all that is needful for some higher state of bodily de- 
velopment needed in some more perfect condition? 



How Jesus Left Us. 161 

We know that life is, though it is unseen. One thing 
unseen, others may exist unseen. Our senses always 
are just on the edge of an extension for which they 
seem partially prepared. There are eyes in beast and 
bird far sharper than those in any man during his 
present development. We seem always on the verge 
of developing additional senses to grasp additional 
realities. Germs of man's ideal state, as it would have 
been had God not taken into account our coming sin 
as a race, may exist altogether beyond anything con- 
ceivable to us, but always visible to the divine eye. 
The coarser stuff of the material body and its cruder 
sense by no means disprove the existed ^ of a finer 
material and both a sharper and a better range of 
senses, to suit a higher condition of life further on. 1 
The present body may be likened to the seed sown in 
the furrow. All that is visible molders away into 
absolute rottenness. But this death of all that is 
visible only gives an invisible something its opportunity 
for which it had long waited. Premonition, anticipa- 
tion, and preparation get opportunity to become actual- 
ity. Out of this death comes a peculiar life, each "seed 
its own body;" that is, its own form is figured. But 
the germ in the seed demands new conditions. It 
wants to get out of its dark and noisome grave. It 
seeks resurrection into air and light that it may take 
on forms entirely unlike the planted seed. Root, 

1 "The visible system is only a small part of the universe ; and there 
must be an invisible order of things which will remain and possess 
energy when the energy of the present system has passed away." — The 
Unseen Universe. 

II 



162 Advent and Ascension. 

stalk, flower, fruit — how completely they differ from 
the hard dry seed ! And yet they are simply the old 
life in its newer forms. Indeed, in some respects the 
resurrection of the seed is more wonderful than that 
claimed for the body of Christ ; than that claimed by 
those who hold to the literal bodily resurrection of all 
believers in him. 

"For each one body that in earth is sown 

There's an uprising of but one for one; 

But for each grain that in the ground is thrown 

Threescore and fourscore spring up thence for one: 

So that the wonder is not half so great 

Of ours as is the uprising of the wheat." 

In nature one form of life sometimes very nearly 
approaches another form of the same life. It is the 
same life that we see in the disgusting caterpillar and 
the gay butterfly. The transition at last is so sudden 
that both forms seem alive at nearly or quite the same 
moment. Something which nearly approximates to a 
twofold form of life is always going on about us. 
Shrubs are bursting into blossom, the dull plant be- 
comes scarlet and white. The flower is but the changed 
leaf. Macmillan tells us that "in the plant the bracts 
are the recoil or retrogression from fullest develop- 
ment, enabling the plant — in the same way that an 
athlete takes a step back in order to leap over an 
obstacle — to produce the higher formation of the 
flower and fruit ; and death itself may be regarded as 
a bract of that continuous existence whose roots and 
foliage are here and whose blossoms and fruit are in 



How Jesus Left Us. 163 

eternity." Thus these indications and premonitions 
are of value as showing that the human body of the 
Lord was capable of resurrection. They make us 
familiar with the idea and prepare us the better to con- 
sider the proof as the Scriptures offer it. They even 
warrant an expectation that death may have no lasting 
dominion over the "Lord of life ;" that it is only a step 
toward another stage of development, and that there 
may be, in his case, so swift a transition that the two- 
fold form of that bodily life may be a necessary exhibi- 
tion in the interval alleged to have occurred between 
his resurrection and his ascension. 1 

To all this argument concerning the body of our 
Lord as susceptible of resurrection the reply may be 
made that any such resurrection is miraculous and 
is therefore to be rejected. But on what ground re- 
jected? There can be but two grounds : either because 
the miraculous is impossible or because it is impossible 
of proof. If there is an Almighty God, a miracle is 
possible. If one should allege that there can be no 
evidence sufficient to prove a miracle, then we might 
ask whether the God able to do the miracle is not also 
able to give the proof of it. We might ask whether 
any different kind of proof is needed here than else- 
where. That a thing is miraculous is simply an in- 



1 The question of Christ's alleged resurrection body as corporeal or as 
spiritual has been often discussed. If we are permitted to think of him 
as able to manifest himself at will in either way during those memorable 
days between the resurrection and the ascension the question is less 
perplexing. 



164 Advent and Ascension. 

ference of ours about it. It can be substantiated, 
exactly as can any other fact, apart from the sub- 
sequent inference about it as a natural or as a miracu- 
lous event. It is not always easy to define the limits 
of the natural. It is not easy to say just where the 
supernatural comes in. Nature and the supernatural 
may not be antagonistic, and may not, on the other 
hand, be identical. But the supernatural may be some- 
times, at least, the extension and overworking, the 
intense energizing, of that which has susceptibility for 
being so used. The miraculous — a form of the super- 
natural — may be conceived of as having always a basis 
in the natural, when wrought on any such material as 
a human body. The physical is made to do what 
otherwise it would not do. The body of the Lord will 
not naturally revive itself, but, as a body, there is a 
basis on w T hich the supernatural may do its work. Nor 
must we omit the fact of high moral purpose in the 
New Testament miracles — a purpose that would cul- 
minate in the alleged resurrection of Jesus. This 
resurrection would be no freak of mere power; no 
mere characterless deed; no mere buttress of uncon- 
nected events. It would be, if he really rose from the 
dead, an actual part, and no inconsiderable part, of the 
very substance of Christianity; the bursting through 
of the partition, and the incarnation of moral fact in 
physical form. In such a case possibility rises to the 
height of probability, indication becomes premonition, 
warranted anticipation stirs us to expectation, and hope 
is ready to listen to proof that all these prophecies 



How Jesus Left Us. 165 

have culminated in an actual resurrection of the body 
of Christ. 

And what has been urged in the above paragraph in 
answer to the objection that such a resurrection of the 
Lord's body would be miraculous is equally an answer 
to the same objection when urged against his alleged 
ascension. We are always on the edge of the mar- 
velous. In nature the unseen world is always indi- 
cated, and thus that which one age calls impossible is 
held by the next age to be highly probable. The 
levitation of the human body would not be considered 
as among the most startling of miracles. Surely all 
the possibilities of the human body are not yet ascer- 
tained. Physiology is not an exhausted science, and 
its close neighbor, psychology is advancing, through 
new methods of study, to new knowledge of the mind 
that so much uses the body. It is the thoughtful decla- 
ration of the authors of The Unseen Universe that "it 
has dawned upon the minds of scientific men that there 
is something besides matter or stuff in the physical 
universe which has an objective reality. The visible 
system is only a small part of the universe." These 
glimpses of the new capacities in matter, of the new 
forces inherent in it and of the new forms it may 
assume, are very significant. The coarser physical 
material may not be the whole that belongs rightfully 
to the human body. This physical substance, to the 
partial exclusion of the finer stuff that would have 
given larger scope to the bodily organization, may 
have been selected in anticipation of the primal sin, 



166 Advent and Ascension. 

and as suited to the present imperfect state of man in 
an imperfect world. It is certain that our physical 
body as now we possess it, if in some respects a fair 
instrument for the expression of our mental and moral 
powers, is in other respects a hindrance. It hampers 
rather than helps. It restricts. The soul beats itself 
often against the barriers that confine it. The ideal 
form of the body is not yet ours. There are possibili- 
ties of wonderful development through finer material 
and sharper senses; possibilities of a "spiritual body" 
— a body completely suited to the perfect expression 
of a perfect spirit. And that some of these more deli- 
cate properties of matter should be manifested in the 
case of our Lord, in the alleged event of resurrection, 
and its completion in his ascent into his own native 
heaven, is not only possible but probable. 

And by these preliminary thoughts about the pos- 
sibility and probability of some such way of our Lord's 
departure from us we are better prepared for a more 
critical study of the testimony of the witnesses to the 
event. 



How Jesus Left Us. 167 



CHAPTER V. 

The Witnesses to His Resurrection and 

Ascension. 

We come next to ask about the character and credi- 
bility of those who claim to be witnesses to the fact of 
a risen and an ascended Christ. 

The earliest New Testament writer to name on his 
pages Christ's bodily resurrection from the dead is 
the apostle Paul. His first Epistles, as all admit, ante- 
date our written Gospels, and give a remarkable promi- 
nence to this twofold event. Alike in his preaching 
and in his writing he looks back through that resur- 
rection and ascension upon the whole career of his 
Lord. 

It is indeed true that no one was present at the 
moment of the resurrection save the Lord himself, so 
he is never, in any testimony, "the rising Lord." He 
is the "risen Lord" in all the evidence submitted to 
the world. Paul wrote long enough after the events of 
the life, death, and resurrection to know of the ac- 
credited "oral gospel" on so many lips. He had seen 
those who had seen Christ before and after the resur- 
rection. He knew, therefore, the full content of the 
earliest preaching by men who had been eyewitnesses 
of the main Christian facts. He had examined with 
his own careful, logical, and practical mind, the 



1 68 (A.DVENT AND ASCENSION. 

evidence on which Christian belief rested in that age. 
He was the most able of any of the early believers to 
weigh the whole evidence as to a fact which he, even 
more than any one of them, saw to involve so much. 
He saw with his great grasp of mind that, the resur- 
rection true, all was true; false, all was false. Any 
mistake as to that fact, the "faith was in vain" and 
Christians the "most miserably mistaken" men on 
earth. He saw, through that miracle, the credibility 
of all the previous miracles of the Lord; and he pro- 
posed to risk the whole argument of Christianity on 
that one fact. Writing when he did, a few years after 
the first preachers had gone out — when he must have 
met them and known accurately what they said about 
the birth, life, teaching, death, and resurrection of 
Jesus — he gives us, on this matter of the resurrection, 
the sum of the oral gospels. We get from him the 
gospel as popularly held and recited by early believers 
before the story of it had been committed to writing 
by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. He has taken 
his facts not from their Gospels but from themselves 
and their fellow-disciples. We are thus able not only 
to know the facts as told, but to compare the oral with 
the written Gospels. 

Paul is thus our earliest gospel writer when he dis- 
courses of the resurrection of the Lord. In his Epistle 
to the Galatians he insists that his conversion was not 
due to the other apostles. They had not, he declares, 
called and commissioned him. The first proof of the 
resurrection, he claims, came to him when on the "way 



How Jesus Left Us. 169 

to Damascus" he saw the risen Lord. His authority 
as a religious teacher — that was .the point questioned — 
was directly from the Lord Jesus himself. But think 
of those subsequent fifteen days when he went up to 
Jerusalem and abode with Peter. 1 Mark's Gospel, 
which is really Peter's, was not yet written out, but 
Peter had it all in mind. These two men, Peter and 
Paul, must have gone over all the facts starting with 
the resurrection, about which they had this in common 
— that they too had seen Jesus after he had died. They 
go over together that marvelous life, less in its begin- 
ning and more in its culmination. Is the stamp of 
Paul's interview on Peter's way of looking on the 
events to be seen in the fact that Mark's Gospel has so 
little to say about the first part and so much to say 
about the last part of Christ's career? For vividness 
of narration Mark, with Peter behind him, is con- 
spicuous in his Gospel. Plis Gospel is most like what 
the oral gospels must have been. Then, too, Paul must 
have heard the men who vended the gospel, as a divine 
commodity, in all the world, and he has no rebuke of 
any mistake; no words of reproof for these hundreds 
of itinerants. Their gospel was his gospel. And 
when he sums up the evidences for the resurrection in 
the Epistle to the Corinthians he depends on these 
traditional testimonies for his facts. His inspiration 
recognizes the accuracy of the oral gospels among 
believers on this matter. So that by Paul we get back 
further than the time when the evangelists wrote out 

l (3al. i, 18, 



170 Advent and Ascension. 

their Gospels. We have the original of the originals — 
the gospel at the outset of Christianity. And we get 
also the immensely important fact that the new re- 
ligion was held by all believers as true because of the 
one stupendous fact authenticating all the others — the 
literal resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave and 
his ascension to heaven. 

So, too, Paul's peculiar grasp of Christianity as a 
whole was gained through his settled faith in the 
resurrection. His gospel is that of the death and the 
resurrection as the basal facts. All doctrine starts 
there with him. "I delivered unto you that which I 
received, first of all, how that Christ died for our sins, 
was buried, and that he rose again the third day." 
There is no evidence that the revelation on the way 
to Damascus taught him that Christ "had died" or had 
been "buried" or was in the grave "three days." All 
these circumstances he had learned elsewhere, and he 
uses them in his inspired reasoning, which is based on 
facts known to him by competent testimony. But he 
seizes on the two things, the "death" and the "resur- 
rection," as primal events — not in order of time but in 
order of importance. The mathematics of the new 
religion — the due order, in months, days, and years, 
of the birth and of each miracle and teaching of Jesus 
— was all incidental to him. What Jesus was as Lord 
and Christ, what he did in redeeming us from sin, in 
restoring us to God, the meaning, the object of it as a 
whole — that was of far more importance than any- 
thing or all things his Lord had said. This infinite 



How Jesus Left Us. 171 

and loving purpose was worth more than any detail 
which Matthew and Mark and Luke and John would 
give to men by and by. 

This, too, was Christ's way of preaching his own 
gospel. He did not require from Nicodemus the com- 
mitting to memory of any facts about the birth in the 
manger or the baptism in the Jordan. He condensed 
the whole fact and the whole doctrine of his religion 
into one sentence: "God so loved the world, that he 
gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth 
in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." 
Detail might come after the man should be "born 
again" through receiving this truth. 

With both Jesus and Paul the need, purpose, occa- 
sion, and results of the gospel are the main things. 
The presentation is not, as we might at first expect, 
this : that such a death and resurrection emphasize the 
previous life and commend it as our example. The 
idea of Paul is the rather that the believer, in God's 
view, died in Christ's dying and rose in Christ's rising, 
and that this is to be realized in our experience of these 
facts. The facts are to be held less with the factual 
and more with the experiential grasp. The believer, 
in Paul's idea, is "risen with Christ" as he was "cru- 
cified with Christ." The ideal in God's mind is to be 
the practical in ours. The historical death of the Lord 
is to be the experiential death of his disciple. The 
historical resurrection is to become the moral resur- 
rection in us. He sees the whole Christian life through 
the twofold lens of these events in Christ's career. He 



172 Advent and Ascension. 

is so firm a believer in the proven fact that Christ rose, 
that this truth is the sunlight flooding all Christian 
outlook. John may see more into the personal con- 
sciousness of Jesus, and in that sense he "knew him." 
But it is Paul who speaks of knowing "the mind of 
Christ." He sees most into the meaning and purpose 
of Christ's coming, the worth of his death and resur- 
rection in behalf of the race. Paul is incomparably 
the wider believer. He has larger horizons. He sees 
the scope of God's plan to an extent unknown to any 
other biblical writer. The two great objective facts 
to him are the death and the resurrection of the Lord, 
and he works them out in their relation alike to God 
and to man. To him their bearing is direct on 
human character and human conduct. The dying of 
the Lord is ever our "dying to sin;" his resurrection 
life is ever to be repeated in our "newness of life." A 
hundred changes are rung on these facts, and this way 
of spiritually apprehending them becomes convincing 
as to the reality of the facts themselves. For these are 
not merely stated but used. The resurrection is more 
than asserted. There could be nothing to assert about 
other things if this were not true. It is used as we 
use the first axiomatic truths in geometry. They must 
be true or there would be no geometry. There is a 
resurrection or there would be no religion, in Paul's 
idea of it. In the midst of a profound argument 
founded on principles rather than on facts he bursts 
out with, "Now is Christ risen from the dead" — as if 
it must be so. It is all practical. These facts convince. 



How Jesus Left Us. 173 

"If then ye be risen with Christ, seek those things 
above, where Christ sitteth." 

And yet this Paul, to whom in stronger moods facts 
are principles among which he treads with firm foot, 
can stop to recite, for his own and for others' good, 
the plain granitic verities. He enumerates six appear- 
ances. 1 They are gained, not from our four Gospels, 
which have not yet been written, but he finds them in 
the steady testimony of the eyewitnesses who give the 
uniform belief of the inspired tradition, the common 
creed of the Christian Church. He names the six that 
suit his special purpose, thus giving hints to the com- 
ing Gospel writers, each one of whom cites only those 
appearances of the Lord that suit his special purpose 
in writing. 

He cites, first of all, "Cephas ;" that is, Peter. But 
Peter has not only his own evidence, as an eyewitness 
of the Lord's presence after the resurrection, but Peter 
is one of the great number of personal witnesses on 
whose testimony the early Church held their one great 
uniform tradition. Some have wondered that we do 
not have here Paul's quotation of the very words in 
which Peter gave him the story of the resurrection 
life during those wonderful "fifteen days" in which the 
two men were together at Jerusalem. But had Paul 
preserved Peter's words the testimony would have been 
only that of the one man, Peter; while by citing him 
in the way he does, we get three things : ( 1 ) The tra- 
ditional and accepted belief, any departure from which 

1 1 Cor. xv, 5-8. 



174 Advent and Ascension. 

in Paul's case would have been detected and exposed 
by readers of the Epistle; (2) Peter's testimony, by 
the consent he gives, in which Paul, so ready else- 
where to reprove him, takes his word without demur 
and cites him as witness; (3) Paul's comparison, in 
his own mind, of what he had seen with what Peter 
had seen. So that this way of quoting is, under the 
circumstances, of threefold strength. For each of the 
two men had seen the Risen One, and their testimony 
is so accordant that the one man cites the other after 
due conference and comparison. 

Paul's second item of evidence is Christ's appear- 
ance to "the twelve," as recorded by Luke. 1 They 
were credible witnesses and are spoken of by him as 
those whose evidence was too well known to need 
citation in direct words. 

His third evidence is the appeal to the testimony of 
the "five hundred." They saw him in Galilee, where 
he was best known, and they saw him "at once." Luke 
does not mention the "five hundred," yet he must have 
known that Paul had cited this fact and had cited it as 
the common belief, a part of the "oral gospel." But 
the obvious reason for the omission alike of giving the 
common belief and of inserting any quotation from 
Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians about the "five 
hundred" will be considered further on. 

The fourth witness is "James." If this is the James 
who was with Peter, all that we have said about the 
interview with the latter disciple has new force; for 

1 Comp. 1 Cor. xv, 5, with Luke xxiv, 36, et seq. 



How Jesus Left Us. 175 

the two men, James and John, were of singularly un- 
like temperament, and they would well supplement 
each other as witnesses of the facts, and in their testi- 
mony as to the formation of the popular belief among 
the disciples. 

The fifth witness whom Paul calls is "the twelve" 
in another interview with the Lord, also recorded by 
Luke. 

The sixth item of the evidence is that given to Paul 
himself as occurring on his way to Damascus. As so 
much depends upon this manifestation to Paul, this 
evidence must have careful study. 

Some things are obvious on the face of the narra- 
tion. One is that Paul at the time and ever afterward 
believed that he saw the literal body of Jesus Christ 
after the Lord had died. The words in which he gives 
the detail are very distinct, and the profound influence 
of the interview on his whole character and career was 
such that, if ever there was a thoroughly changed man, 
Paul was that man. True, he uses that word of double 
meaning, "vision," in one of his descriptions of what 
occurred. Our use, to-day, of the word in its adjective 
form is a derogative use. The "visionary" is with us 
the fantastic, the imaginative, the deceptive, the unreal. 
But the other, the large and noble use of the word, is 
almost exactly the opposite. The word describes, when 
used naturally and in strictly philological exactness, 
"what is seen," that which appears at the moment when 
the eye rests upon it. In any particular case the whole 
mass of circumstances decides whether the "vision" is 



176 Advent and Ascension. 

that of the imagination or of the senses. In this case 
the "vision" is that appearance of Christ to the apostle 
the reality of which he so reiterates that his holy in- 
dignation would have been stirred to the utmost had 
anyone hinted at a mental illusion. He says he saw 
a light/ describes it as exceeding "the splendor of the 
noonday sun;" that he heard audible words, and tells 
what they were — others seeing the light and hearing 
the voice but failing to distinguish the exact sentences 
uttered. 2 From the intimation in Acts xxvi, 16-18, it 
would appear that the communication was much be- 
yond what is recorded. Paul's attitudes of body are 
given. He "stood,'' that is, stopped, speechless. Sub- 
sequently both he and his companions "fell to the 
ground," they all hearing an indistinct voice, but "see- 
ing no man" who could have spoken. He only of the 
company sees "the Lord" and recognizes definite words 
addressed to himself. He says, speaking of the mo- 
ment before he w 7 as blinded, that he had then seen the 
risen Christ; 3 so that as an actual eyewitness of the 
reality of Christ's resurrection life he afterward claims 
that he is at least on an equality with the other dis- 
ciples. Presently his eyes — eyelids — were opened, but 
he saw none of his companions. He then knew that 
he was blind. 4 Ananias is sent to him and the sight of 
his eyes is restored. All this is of the most realistic 
character. Other persons are connected with it. Time, 
place, details, persons who are opponents and who are 
friends, are given. Hallucination is out of the ques- 

1 Acts ix, 3. 2 Acts xxii, 9. 3 1 Cor. ix, 1. « Acts ix, 8. 



How Jesus Left Us. 177 

tion. He knew fully, others knew partially, just what 
had occurred. Then, too, as if to banish all idea of 
mental illusion there is a moral side to the whole series 
of events. Telling his experience to objectors, he 
presents the phenomenon in its external literalness; 
telling it among believers, he gives the correspond- 
ing spiritual phenomena — the latter impossible had 
the light and voice and servants and the Lord, and, 
finally, Ananias, been seen only in a dream or in a 
moment of epileptic excitement. The external calls 
for an internal manifestation; as does the internal 
for the external phenomena. The two exactly coincide, 
and so exclude all idea of merely mental vision. Paul 
sees the light; sees at the same moment the proof 
of the Christ. He falls to the earth; and he falls 
prostrate in spirit. He recognizes, in some way which 
we may not understand, who speaks to him. His 
Hebrew training would have suggested that God 
spoke, but he knows that the speaker is the Christ he 
is persecuting. Over against the words of the speaker 
are the words of the prostrate man. In place of the 
"threatenings and slaughter" which he had "breathed 
out" at the beginning of his journey are words, now 
that he has recovered from his first speechless amaze- 
ment, which combine all penitence, all faith, all sub- 
mission, all consecration. His words, "Lord, what 
wilt thou have me to do ?" are in exact character. The 
persecutor becomes a friend of the persecuted; the 
energetic opponent will be as energetic a disciple. 
Describing the scene as it appeared on its external side, 
12 



Advent axd Ascension. 

he uses the words "to me he appeared" — teapot Gxp&r]. 1 
Describing the same scene from the spiritual side, he 
says, "in me God revealed his Son" — ev spot. 9 It is in 
this exact harmony between the external and the 
spiritual that we find the absolute banishment of any 
trace of mental hallucination. The bodily Christ was 
revealed to his bodily eye, the spiritual Christ to his 
soul. All else is excluded. The message to Ananias 
and his interview with Paul, whose bodily blindness — 
as real as all the other realities in the story — was 
cured by the word of the Lord Jesus, through this 
disciple, are all in keeping. The immediate labor of 
the converted man at Damascus is exactly of a piece 
with that which historically preceded and historically 
follows. 

Paul's testimony to the resurrection, as one who had 
9een the Lord after that event, is to be added to the 
common faith of the earlier Christians founded on 
other testimony. He names the preexisting proof, as 
Peter, James, John, and the others accepted it, before 
he mentions his own most important contribution to 
the evidences of it. So that we have his indorsement 
of their witness as well as his own direct and personal 
testimony. 

And the reason for Paul's citation of these proofs of 
the common belief of the Christian communities in the 
resurrection of Jesus may be considered as the clinch- 
ing of the argument : for his object is to prove the 
resurrection of believers because of the corporeity of 

J or. xv, 8. a Cor. i, 16. 



How Jesus Left Us. 179 

the Lord's resurrection. He rests his entire argument 
for the resurrection of the believing dead not at all 
on any word of Christ, but upon the fact of Christ's 
bodily resurrection. He must have known of Christ's 
promises. He passes them all. He uses just this one 
thing: "Now is Christ risen from the dead." He does, 
indeed, employ the analogy of the germ in the seed, in 
that wonderful fifteenth chapter of the Epistle to the 
Corinthians, but he has not used it as an argument, as 
he might have done ; only as an illustration drawn 
from the manner of nature's resurrection. He answers 
by this figure an objector who asks, "How are the dead 
raised up?" The whole proof rests on the indubitable 
fact that there has been a specimen of resurrection in 
the case of Jesus. 

It is obvious that the mere resurrection is but a 
partial restoration of our Lord to his original state. It 
leaves him on earth. The completed idea is that of an 
ascension to where he was before he came to us. His 
ascension is his perfect glorification. The two events 
are considered by the apostles as one completed event ; 
so that one of the gospel writers puts the two together, 
and omits all reference to the intervening "forty days" 
which he and all the others knew so well. The ascen- 
sion is constantly implied in the resurrection. "It is 
the root and beginning of the ascension" in the con- 
ception of the New Testament. It is assumed by the 
two evangelists who do not give us the details. 1 It is 
presupposed as a fact believed by those in the churches 

1 Matt, xxvi, 64; John xvi, 22. 



180 Advent and Ascension. 

addressed by the writers of the Epistles. 1 Jesus is ever 
the Lord who has ascended into his glory. There is a 
continuous sense of the omnipresence of the Lord as 
one seated at the right hand of all power, and therefore 
we are not to regard the ascension of the Lord so much 
as a bodily transformation — that took place at his 
resurrection — but the rather as his entrance again into 
the heavenly state ; as an exaltation from the condi- 
tions he had imposed upon himself in his earthly career. 
He rises physically and visibly. The act leaves its own 
impression on the world's thought. Chosen witnesses 
see him in the very act of resuming the infinite glory 
he had with his Father before the world was. 2 As the 
details of the infancv are so fittingly given bv Luke in 
his Gospel, so the details of the ascension are given by 
him both in his Gospel and in his Acts. 

In the book of the Revelation John does not see his 
Lord in the act of rising from the grave, nor in the 
completed act of rising from the earth into the heavens. 
All that is past, in John's conception. Christ is now, 
for John in the Revelation, already ascended. He has 
resumed all his original glory. He is now the undis- 
guised Son of God. He sits on the throne. He rules 
the world, in all its changes, in the interests of his 
kingdom. He dieth no more. Resurrection and ascen- 
sion are long gone by. Glorification is begun, is con- 
tinuing, and continues for evermore. Gospel story and 
the assumptions, so well warranted, of the former facts 

1 Acts ii, 31-33; also vii, 55; Eph. i, 20, 21; ii, 6; iv, 8; Phil, ii, 6, 10; 
1 Tim. iii, 16; 1 Pet. hi, 22; Rev. i, 13-19. • John xvii, 5. 



How Jesus Left Us. 181 

have given place to testimony as to the glorious future 
of Christ's Church. The Apocalypse sees the risen 
Lord. Thus witnesses whose literary methods take 
various forms agree in furnishing us, in our New Tes- 
tament, an indisputable testimony to the resurrection 
and the ascension of the Lord. 

The credibility of the witnesses to the twofold event 
is a matter that need not long detain us. Matthew and 
John, themselves original apostles, were credible men; 
the one, as his Gospel shows him to be, a man of large 
brain, and the other, peculiarly near to Jesus, a 
man of large heart. Each of these men selects his 
facts, out of the vast material before him, according to 
his distinct purpose in writing. Their variations are 
just those which a good lawyer would like to have in 
his witnesses, showing no collusion. Their agreement 
in the main facts is obvious. They are both describing 
the same life and death and resurrection. Mark, for 
some reason not now clearly understood, but in no way 
prejudicial to his veracity, is writing for Peter; for he 
always sees things as through Peter's eyes. His turns 
of thought and ways of speech, his rapid and incisive 
narrative, are so like Peter as to have suggested direct 
dictation, at least in parts of the Gospel, and authority 
in all. Luke, in his opening chapter, confesses that he 
is simply "setting in order the things commonly be- 
lieved" 1 among the band of apostles and disciples at 
large. So that we have a painstaking man, educated, 
careful, and accurate, with peculiar means, through 

1 Luke i, i, 2. 



182 Advent and Ascension. 

intimacy with the "holy family" for knowing, not only 
the hidden secret of the birth, but the open proof of the 
resurrection. His attestation, therefore, is that of the 
whole circle of those nearest the facts. For years he 
kept close company with Paul, who was also a careful 
investigator among the original sources of information. 
So that Luke has not only his own most important re- 
searches, and those of Paul, but he gives us professedly 
the contents of that "oral gospel" which was preached 
at the outset. Had he changed a single statement of 
the "oral gospel," especially about the resurrection, the 
change would have been instantly detected and ex- 
posed. For these things were not done in a corner, 
and the statement of them was world-wide before he 
wrote. He opens with a challenge which no opponent 
ventured to meet. Better the word of such a man, so 
situated and so representative of the thousands who 
knew the facts, than if we had half a dozen Gospels by 
as many apostles. 

It may be that Divine Wisdom, foreseeing how 
certainly the Christian religion as a series of facts 
must rest ultimately on careful documentary evidence, 
ordained this singularly complete arrangement of the 
evidences ; which, so far as we can see, is the best 
possible testimony for all ages until time shall end. 



How Jesus Left Us. 183 



CHAPTER VI. 

The Testimony of the Witnesses to the 
Resurrection and Ascension. 

The witnesses, as we have seen in the previous sec- 
tion, are credible men. They had the best possible 
means of knowing the truth in this matter. Some of 
them saw Christ after his resurrection, and that, too, 
under circumstances where mistake was impossible. 
Two of them in the first five or seven years, while all 
was yet fresh and freshly known, set themselves to ex- 
amine the evidences. These two men were by nature 
and training the men best able to do this work. They 
had access to original sources of information. At 
length, before their death, these two men, Luke and 
Paul, who for years were in closest relations, wrote out 
what they had so carefully ascertained. 

Let us now turn to the testimony of our four 
evangelists. 

Keep in mind the purpose of Matthew, as gathered 
from the whole tone of his writings. Let us keep the 
idea before us that he is writing to exhibit the royalty 
of Christ and his final dominion over all the world. 
He shows the Lord's descent from David as a king, 
and he has always in mind the setting forth of kingly 
function as Christ's great and distinctive character- 



184 Advent and Ascension. 

istic. And so out of the ten appearances which were 
before him as material he cites but two, and they are 
exactly in keeping with his obvious purpose. We 
should expect him to give us the story in narrative 
form. That is exactly what he dees, and he is the only 
one who so gives it. 1 His narrative bears the marks 
of a tradition coming from the Roman soldier then on 
guard, and who might have been afterward converted. 
Matthew gives the Jewish story about the Roman 
watch "asleep" as it would be given in scorn by one 
there, and who knew better. Writing from the stand- 
point he did, Matthew must record the royal air of 
the resurrection, the kingly victory of the Risen One. 
So, too, Matthew selects the appearance to the women. 2 
Mark and Luke give only their return, but omit the 
story of the appearance to them. The incident of their 
worshiping the Risen One is, as we should expect, cited 
by Matthew, and by him alone. That which honors 
Jesus, or shows others as honoring him, Matthew will 
select and insert in his Gospel. 

The other manifestation is that given to "the eleven." 
But this exactly accords with the appearance to the 
"five hundred" named by Paul. 3 Matthew alone tells 
us where this occurred. That the call to a rendezvous 
was specially addressed to the eleven by no means 
excludes the wider invitation. The eleven only are 
named by Matthew because to him they are the imme- 
diate bodyguard of the royal personage. They are 

1 Matt, xxviii, 2-4. 2 Matt, xxviii, 1. 

3 Comp. Matt, xxviii, 16, with 1 Cor. xv, 7. 



How Jesus Left Us. 185 

the King's friends. They are the especial and au- 
thorized and official witnesses to the ages that "He is 
risen." Matthew, ever true to his purpose, sets forth 
the climax of the Lord's history. This is the evangelist 
who makes the King, in the glory of his new resurrec- 
tion life, to stand on his spiritual throne and send forth 
heralds to summon the world's allegiance : "Go ye, 
therefore" — the tone is regal in this world-wide proc- 
lamation — "teach all nations. I am with you alway, 
even unto the end of the world." Matthew saw Jesus 
come as a King and go as a King. Resurrection was 
crowning, to Matthew. 

Turning now to Mark's Gospel we find first of all 
the story, as in all the other evangelists, of "the empty 
tomb." 1 In common with Matthew he gives the return 
of "the women," but omits this appearance of the Lord. 
Writing under the inspiration of Peter, he gives the 
appearance to Mary Magdalene as "the first;" for it 
was the first to Peter. Renan, with his usual disregard 
of exact facts, says, "The enthusiasm of an hysterical 
woman has given a new God to the world." But that 
she was an hysterical woman remains to be proved ; 
that she was the only, or even the chief, witness is 
simply Renan's assumption ; that the disciples at first 
discredited her testimony 2 until confirmed by others is 
not noticed by him in the French novel to which he has 
given the title of The Life of Jesus. Mark, in his 
own brief way, condenses into a single sentence the 
story of the walk to Emmaus — the story so fully given 

1 Mark xvi, 1-4. 2 Mark xvi, n. 



1 86 Advent and Ascension. 

by Luke. The last verses in the sixteenth of Mark have 
been questioned, but strong evidence of their genuine- 
ness is found in their literary style. They are exactly 
in Mark's mood. Their crisp and rapid narration is 
precisely like that shown everywhere else in his Gospel. 
That he is not copying Luke, and yet that he had the 
same source of information as that evangelist, is clear 
from his altered word when describing the interview. 
Luke says their "eyes were holden" — literally, "were 
mastered." Mark, pictorial always, says that "he ap- 
peared in another form." And Mark has also the story 
of the evening meal when the disciples from Emmaus 
burst in upon them with the news of the risen Christ. 
The third of the appearances which Mark mentions — 
third in order as Peter saw them, but fifth in chrono- 
logical order — is that vouchsafed to the eleven in 
Thomas's absence. Characteristically, this is omitted 
by Matthew but given by Mark. It was too dramatic 
to escape his notice. The upbraiding of the disciples 
for their unbelief, would not suit the purpose of the 
one, but it is fit material for the design of the other 
evangelist. Peter's hand is seen in naming the order 
of the events as Mark gives them; seen, too, in the 
selection of the material, and also in the rapidity and 
verve of the story. For the divine inspiration of the 
writer would no more change his mental peculiarities 
than the peculiar features of his face. With the idea 
of the Roman power ever in mind, Mark sees how the 
Roman would doubt. And he is careful to name the 
fact that Mary's story and the story of the Emmaus 



How Jesus Left Us. 187 

disciples awakened doubt at first. He would show 
that they were not credulous men. And there is the 
understood inference that, if these men were incredu- 
lous at first, they must have been careful about the 
proofs that afterward compelled them to believe in the 
resurrection of their Lord. Mark ends his Roman 
Gospel in character ; for his last words about his Lord 
and Master are these : "So then, after he had spoken 
unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on 
the right hand of God" ! 

To Luke we turn — Luke who sets forth Christ as 
the Saviour for the whole world. He was in closest 
touch, after the resurrection, with the little inner circle 
of the first disciples. He knew the traditional belief 
of the first few years on all questions of the birth and 
death and resurrection. Scraps of the history had 
been jotted down by various disciples. These he knew. 
These, if needed, he would be likely to use. His in- 
timate relation to all the parties made him our best 
annalist of events on their inner side, and his educa- 
tion gave his narratives a certain orderliness as well 
as proportion. This evangelist, as do all the others, 
starts in his story by giving us "the empty tomb" — a 
fact which shows what importance they all attached 
to that circumstance ; a fact which shows also the state 
of mind of the disciples themselves at the outset and 
goes far to account for their early incredulity, which 
the events subsequently known completely overcame. 
The evening walk to Emmaus is given in detail by 
Luke with tender grace; and its ending, as they 



188 Advent and Ascension. 

return to Jerusalem to find the assembled disciples, is 
recorded. Then the Lord's sudden manifestation and 
his exposition of the Scriptures about himself, ending 
in a world-wide commission to be afterward repeated 
— all this is material for a gospel so broad in its scope 
as this of Luke. But, while Luke dwells on the details 
of this interview with a fullness not found in Mark, 
the incident is so managed, in its relation to other in- 
cidents, that we get through it an indorsement of the 
facts known to Mary, to Peter and John, also to the 
women and to "the eleven." The Emmaus disciples 
saw the Lord twice during that memorable "first day 
of the week." If the hints given are followed out, and 
if we accept the belief of many that Luke rather than 
John was the anonymous traveler to Emmaus, we shall 
have an additional reason for Luke's selection of an 
incident which connects itself with all the other ap- 
pearances on that memorable day. The interweaving 
of personal narrative with the testimony of others 
makes the strongest presentation possible of the fact of 
the Lord's resurrection. Just here a difficulty has 
been named. Luke's story taken alone would leave the 
impression that on that very evening the Lord ascended 
after giving the "great commission." But that Luke 
himself did not consider that he had given such an 
impression is manifest from the fact that in the Acts 
he inserts the statement of the "forty days" between 
the rising from the grave and the rising into the sky. 
But the point of view from which Luke would present 
the Saviour of the world to his readers accounts for 



How Jesus Left Us. 189 

the haste in which, omitting intervening events until 
his second book (the Acts) should be written, he 
hurries on to the conclusion of his Gospel. He will 
recount, in his second book, certain closing facts in the 
resurrection life of the Lord and make them the start- 
ing point for his new story of "the Acts of the Lord, 
the Spirit." 

To John's Gospel we now turn, with its sweetness 
and tenderness. It has been happily called "the heart 
of Jesus." Written last, some have intimated that its 
object was to supply deficiencies in the other Gospels. 
But so far is it from this that it might be held, in not 
a few respects, to increase the difficulties of construct- 
ing a continuous story. John's aim is as individual as 
is that of either of the other evangelists. It is the 
story of the divine Lord becoming man for the re- 
demption and salvation of all who shall believe on him. 
The story of the last days of the Lord is given with 
great fullness, and if some additional details concern- 
ing the resurrection are found on his pages, it is only 
because they best illustrate his own mood or best serve 
his definite purpose. Lie, too, starts with the empty 
sepulcher; but his description alone has the air of an 
eyewitness. He sees the events rather than records the 
testimony of others. He is a part of his own history. 
He tells of the ardent affection that led the loving 
disciple to go first to the tomb, and that the zeal of his 
companion, Peter, carried him into the place of burial, 
where he was speedily followed by the evangelist him- 
self. He had "looked in" at firsts and saw that all was 



190 Advent and Ascension. 

in order there save that the body was gone. He went 
in to satisfy himself further. He saw, from the linen 
clothes left as they were in due order, and from the 
napkin that had been on the face, now folded carefully 
and laid apart, that there had been no violent snatch- 
ing of the body, no hasty work of enemies, and that 
any removal of the body by friends without the cloth- 
ing was impossible, even could they have gained access 
to the sepulcher. He himself says that at this sight 
"he believed." Believed what? Clearly, that somehow 
the Lord had risen. The disciples as a body did not 
yet do it. He, over the empty grave, believes that his 
Lord lives somewhere a bodily life. Love draws quick 
as well as sure conclusions from evidence which as 
yet was negative. "The disciples knew not" — it had 
not occurred to them as it now flashed on him — that 
"the Scriptures" of the Old Testament had foretold 
the resurrection which would leave an empty tomb. 1 
Then comes the second in the order of the appearances 
of the Lord, the first in John's record — that to Mary 
Magdalene at the sepulcher. The scene introducing 
the dialogue, with its reference to his ascension to his 
Father, is in keeping with the interior spirit of John's 
whole story of those resurrection hours. The majestic 
ordering of the women to announce to the disciples the 
speedy return to heaven is another touch in the realistic 
picture. The interview in which the Lord bade the 
disciple, while John was present, to view the scars on 
his pierced hand, now healed, and on his pierced side, 

1 Comp. Psa. xvi, 10, with Acts ii, 25, 31. 



How Jesus Left Us. 191 

where had been inflicted a mortal wound, is given by 
this evangelist. The air of direct narration, with the 
exact words carefully set down, shows the vivid im- 
pression made on the mind of the writer. For the in- 
terview with the disciples when Thomas was with them 
we are indebted to John ; and the additional words of 
blessing to all who believe without seeing are those 
which this evangelist would be quick to recall. Indeed, 
it is by introducing conversations which came up so 
naturally with such deeds that we get from John a 
clearer sense of the reality of these events than from 
either of the other Gospels. The interview with the 
seven on the shore of the Galilean Lake, 1 John again 
being one of the number, shows the same characteristic. 
It is the report of an eyewitness who had these re- 
peated opportunities for identifying Jesus. It is the 
testimony of "the best friend," who in such a case 
cannot be deceived. It is an identification not only by 
eye and ear and touch, but by the whole mood of mind 
and heart. 

If to that of the four Gospels we add the testimony 
of Peter, speaking for others as well as for himself, 
given under circumstances where contradiction was 
possible if there was any mistake about his facts, we 
shall have crowned the accumulated testimony by the 
very words of an eyewitness — words that cover the 
whole ground. He says: "God showed him openly 
not to all the people, but to witnesses chosen before of 
God, even to us, who did eat and drink with him after 

1 John xxi, 1-24. 



192 Advent and Ascension. 

he rose from the dead." 1 The superiority of such wit- 
ness over that which would have been given by a more 
public display is too evident to require more than a 
mention. The fact itself is abundantly attested, and 
that was all that was needed. 

But there are a great number of corroborative facts 
— facts before and facts afterward — for which it is 
impossible to give a rational account apart from 
Christ's resurrection. The witness of the angels at 
the sepulcher might be adduced, as also the fact that 
the resurrection gathered the disciples, who had been 
scattered by the death, as nothing else could have 
done; so that the gospel thenceforth was that of 
"Christ and the resurrection." Our Lord's own teach- 
ing about his coming resurrection and that of all men, 
and his coupling of the one of these events with the 
other, might also be dwelt upon. 2 These are things 
connected so closely with the direct proofs that, were 
the evidence not altogether conclusive, they might be 
fitly urged. In almost any other theme under discus- 
sion these would be named as of themselves sufficiently 
evidential. But they are simply superabundant here. 
It is enough. "Now is Christ risen from the dead." 

But, while nothing valid can be offered on the other 
side, it has been sought to weaken rather than to de- 
stroy this immense volume of testimony. 

We may safely leave the old "lethargy theory" of 
Schleiermacher in the grave where it was so deeply 
buried by Strauss — himself a destructive critic. His 

1 Acts x, 40, 41. 2 Johnxi, 25. 



How Jesus Left Us. 193 

object in its burial was to find a place for his own 
scarcely less unfortunate theory: that of an "exalted 
state of mind in which the apostles honestly thought 
they saw a risen Lord." Strauss's theory in some 
form — each form of it differing from the others and 
usually contradicting the others — has reappeared in 
each generation. 

It is to be noticed that this way of accounting for 
the event simply shifts the question from one about 
the fact to one about the mental state of the witnesses. 
Suppose they were or were not in "an exalted state of 
mind." In either case the fact is not touched. What 
if this is the rather true: that they were not in a 
specially exalted state of mind at the outset, but were 
subsequently thrilled by the evidence ? The exaltation 
subsequent to the fact is exactly what we should ex- 
pect. That after a certain event they acted in a logical 
way is testimony to the event, and strengthens rather 
than weakens the evidence. Some such event as the 
Lord's resurrection is needed to account for the feel- 
ing. Strauss refutes Schleiermacher's theory of 
"lethargy rather than death" by showing that this 
would destroy the moral character of Jesus, since it 
makes him also a perpetrator of a mistake which he 
used fraudulently after "the lethargy" had ended. 
But Strauss did not see that his own theory of "the 
exaltation of mind in the witnesses" destroys the moral 
character of the Lord himself and of his disciples as 
well, and this for precisely the same reason. The 
perpetuation of such a mistake would have come to be 
13 



194 Advent and Ascension. 

the perpetuation of a known and self-acknowledged 
fraud on the part of both Master and disciple. Any 
"elevation of mind" could have been possible only at a 
subsequent stage of the events. 

Further, the disciples, so far from craving and ex- 
pecting such a thing as the Lord's bodily resurrection, 
and thus "creating it," did not at first recognize him. 
Mary Magdalene and the disciples going to Emmaus 
certainly had no "expected image" of a risen Christ 
before their minds. They did not "conceive such a 
person in their imagination" or "idealize him in their 
soul." He was the unexpected one to them. And 
when, on that memorable evening, the disciples are 
incredulous about his bodily appearance, they have to 
be sharply rebuked by him. 

One might, in the midst of surrounding circum- 
stances which forbade anything other than mental 
hallucination, accept some such thing in the case of 
one or two persons ; but here we have twelve, and pres- 
ently five hundred men. Jesus at Galilee is no figure 
floating indistinctly in the air, luminous only by faint 
radiance in a narrow room. He has a human body 
which offers itself to be "handled." He "eats and 
drinks." He utters words, linking them with words 
before his death. Differing in some respects, because 
of the more advanced stage of his resurrection life, he 
is manifested and is "known" to these disciples over 
and over again. A few special instances are given, out 
of many which occurred during those forty days. He 
takes up his old work of "the kingdom," and he makes 



How Jesus Left Us. 195 

provision for carrying it on by their hands when he 
shall go back to his Father. All his ideas are those of 
the former Christ. Anything save the full acceptance 
of the fact would cast us back on the unthinkable 
theory of actual imposture on the part, not only of the 
witnesses, but of the Lord himself. 

In one form of this theory it ventures on the state- 
ment that the body was "thrown aside, somewhere and 
somehow," and never entombed; or that all the 
apostles saw was a "vision." But Paul expressly says, 
when speaking of the belief of the early Christians 
which he had "received" from them, that it was a fact 
of common notoriety that Christ "was buried." 1 So 
that this disposal of the Lord's body at his death was 
recognized alike by friends and foes. It was placed 
in a sepulcher. Somehow that sepulcher was emptied. 
Friends and enemies alike had no motive for having it 
emptied. It was for the interest of both, from their 
opposite points of view, to keep it filled with that body. 
The Romans certainly would not empty it. The Jews 
would have liked, subsequently, to be able to produce 
the body, for that would have been an obvious way of 
meeting the testimony of the disciples. Better than any 
persecution for destroying the new faith would have 
been the simple act of producing Christ's dead body. 

And what was seen and known by disciples after- 
ward was not a "spirit," but a body : "Handle me and 
see ; a spirit hath not flesh and bones." And the one 
great object in all these interviews was not new teach- 

1 1 Cor. xv, 4. 



196 Advent and Ascension. 

ing, since the time for that had passed ; but he would 
show that he, the dead in body, in body lived again, 
contrary to their expectations. For the ruler who had 
loaned him a grave, and the ruler who had furnished 
the perfume, and the women who had started for the 
sepulcher, and the "certain others" who also went with 
them, had all tried to keep him dead by embalming 
his body. So that "expectation of a resurrection, 
causing such exaltation of mind as to unfit them as 
witnesses," is a theory harder to maintain than that 
which Strauss sought to displace. It has not only no 
one fact for it, but a whole series of facts against it. 
It is founded on a diagnosis of the apostles' mental 
condition impossible for them at that time. The 
bodily appearance of their Lord was clearly enough 
the one thing they did not anticipate. What he had 
said about "rising" they had either not understood at 
all, as is probable, in some instances, or else, as in other 
instances, they had regarded it as the soul's rising 
from the ruins of the grave — the exact opposite of any 
bodily resurrection. 

The "vision theory" is hardly less defensible. It is 
certainly contradicted by Paul. The Lord's appear- 
ance to him he believed to be a "vision" only in the 
sense of "something actually seen by the eyes." He 
insists on an actual "appearance" of his Lord to him 
when journeying toward Damascus. For, arguing 
with the Corinthians, 1 he proves bodily resurrection a 
possibility from the fact that it had occurred when 

1 1 Cor. xv. 



How Jesus Left Us. 197 

Christ's body was raised. He claims that Jesus met 
him in body, spoke to him, and commissioned him after 
the resurrection; so that he, as well as the other 
apostles had seen the Lord in body. Nor can we think 
for a moment of any "mere vision" which the truthful 
Lord allowed the earlier apostles, and afterward Paul 
also, to believe as real, without such a correction from 
him as would set so important a matter completely at 
rest. The "vision theory" hurts the apostles, but it 
injures their Lord more; it utterly destroys his 
moral character. It is far too late in the day for the 
serious discussion of any theory of imposture. And 
yet as we see the other theories depart we are shut up 
to this, unless the one — the only one — other alter- 
native is adopted ; namely, a real resurrection of the 
Lord. The absence of all motive for deceit, the testi- 
mony of so many disinterested witnesses, the agree- 
ment of so many facts going before and following the 
resurrection, the whole previous character of the Lord, 
who could not have lent himself to any imposture — 
these make any thought of willful imposture utterly 
untenable. The disciples formed, during the lifetime 
of each other and in the presence of a generation who 
could examine the facts, a great public body of wit- 
nesses whose testimony became the received Christian 
tradition and was the substance of the new gospel. 
The most prominent thing in the earliest Christian 
century was the preaching of "Jesus and the resurrec- 
tion." Mistake would have been itself miraculous in 
such circumstances, while imposture is unimaginable. 



198 Advent and Ascension. 

And it must not be forgotten that over against any 
theory that discredits the actual resurrection is the 
completed fact of the ascension. On this matter Luke 
gives us clearest details. He gives the place where it 
occurred, the time when it took place, the order of the 
circumstances, the human witnesses, the angelic tes- 
timony, the parting words of the Lord, the strong im- 
pression it made on the disciples at the time, the per- 
manent influence of it upon their subsequent career, 
the peculiar hopes it excited of his return to them in a 
similar manner to that they had seen when he ascended 
into the waiting cloud. Here are the graphic words 
in which the ascension of the Lord, its influence on the 
disciples as the completion of the act of resurrection, 
and its connection with the second advent are all given 
us by Luke: 1 "And he led them out as far as Bethany. 
And zvhen he had spoken these things, while they 
beheld, he was taken up. And he lifted up his hands 
and blessed them. And it came to pass that while he 
blessed them, he was parted from them and carried up 
into heaven, and a cloud received him out of their sight. 
And they worshiped him. While they looked stead- 
fastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men 
stood by them in white apparel, which also said, Ye 
men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? 
This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into 
heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen 
him go into heaven." An ideal ending is the real his- 
toric ending of this earthly career. The resurrection 

1 Luke xxiv. 50 Comp Acts i, 9-11. 



How Jesus Left Us. 199 

is completed in the ascension. The two are one in the 
broad thought of the Christian world. 

It remains now to sum up the evidence in due 
order. 

1. Our Lord wrought miracles during his life, and 
these prepare us to accept in his case the miracle of 
his resurrection. It was along his own line of attesta- 
tion. By miracles, tending to some culminating act, 
he met the universal demand for such attestations at 
the outset of a dispensation. Miracles are for eras. 
They are not scattered promiscuously over the 
Scripture story. The miracle of creation excepted, 
there are no recorded miracles in the earlier story of 
biblical events. Just where other religions have their 
myths the Bible is silent about miracles. When 
miracles do occur it is at well-defined eras and at 
specific junctures; and their character is always so 
specific, and they are so related to other circumstances 
and so exactly timed, that no two of them could change 
places. They are credible just when and where they 
occur and nowhere else. And certainly they have a 
natural association with the idea of Jesus. For him 
not to have done them would have been well-nigh in- 
credible. Their absence would have required more 
faith than does their presence on the biblical page; 
especially when we remember that they are all moral 
truths bursting through and revealing themselves in 
the material world ; incarnations in which the greatest 
spiritual realities take on visible forms. They are 
not the buttress of the building, but an actual part of 



200 A.DVENT AND ASCENSION. 

the structure and of the very substance of Christianity 
itself. 

And somewhere these miraculous illustrations of 
what is part and parcel of this religion should cul- 
minate. Hitherto Christ's greatest miracles had been 
that of others' resurrection; but now, when dead, he 
can raise himself out of the grave and thus show, by 
his own resurrection, that "he was not holden of 
death." In one point of view the Father "gave him 
the victory;" in another he is himself "the Victor." 
And the Scriptures present his resurrection as his 
culminating act. At that point the Father is repre- 
sented as saying, "Thou art my Son : this day have I 
begotten thee." 

2. Such a miracle gives him especial memory in the 
thought of the world. Apart from his resurrection the 
world's thought of him would be that the grave had 
conquered him ; the splendor of his miracles forgotten 
in the sad tragedy of his death. In that case the last 
the world saw of him was his entrance to the grave to 
which in pity his friends consigned the body of one 
whose mission had failed. The final and fixed thought 
of him would be of one who after an inglorious failure 
filled a more inglorious grave. The "Giver of life," 
one of the titles he gave himself, would be terribly 
ironical if applied to one on whose dishonored grave 
the Syrian stars looked down. But if he really raised 
himself from the grave, then all is changed, and what 
had seemed a defeat becomes a triumph. Only by his 
death could he have had the opportunity for the great- 



How Jesus Left Us. 201 

est conceivable victory — his resurrection. So that 
now the risen Christ is enthroned as the Ever-living 
One. He lives the more in the world's idea of him for 
having permitted himself to die so as to show by his 
resurrection and his ascension that "he lives for ever- 
more. ,, He had slumbered his "three days" in the grave. 
There was thus afforded the greatest and most complete 
opportunity of declaring his divinity by a peerless 
miracle, one that should crown all the others and ex- 
hibit the "Lord of life" in his true character before the 
whole world. Keenly alive to the world's idea of him- 
self, and speaking out of heaven, where with his resur- 
rection body he abides, he said: "I am the first and 
the last, and the Living one ; and I was dead, and be- 
hold, I am alive for evermore." 1 

3. We must remember that he promised his own 
resurrection. In confidential moods, alone with his 
disciples, he spoke of his death, told where he should 
die, how long he should stay in the grave, what dispo- 
sition would be made of his body, and that he should 
rise from the dead. He did certainly declare, not only 
to those disciples, privately at first, but afterward 
openly to all the people, his coming resurrection. His 
open saying on this matter, perverted indeed in spirit 
but actual in fact, was made one of the charges at his 
trial. His body was not to be crushed by stoning — 
the Jewish form of execution — nor to be torn piece- 
meal by an infuriated mob. He was not to be drowned 
in sea or lake or river. His body was not to be cre- 

1 Rev. i, 18, Revised Version, 



202 Advent and Ascension. 

mated nor yet to be mysteriously taken from human 
vision. Nor was he to die by disease. But he was to 
be publicly put to death. Nor was he to be buried in 
a common grave, but placed in a sepulcher. He was 
not to be duly embalmed by loving disciples or family 
friends, for that body of his was to rise again. We 
can see that a hundred dispositions of that body would 
have been possible, any one of which would have 
thwarted the kind and manner of resurrection that 
he definitely predicted. The singularly minute cir- 
cumstances, any one of which would have hindered 
that form of resurrection, were all matters of arrange- 
ment on his part before he died ; but they had been so 
foretold that none of them were intentionally fulfilled 
by Jew or Gentile. 

4. He was seen repeatedly by those who had best 
known him as a living man. These people knew that 
he had been placed in a certain sepulcher. They testify 
that they saw him afterward alive. They knew. 
Others had seen him only casually ; had an outside and 
fragmentary knowledge about him. These men had 
been with him three years, had intimate acquaintance 
with him, had seen him in private and in public. The 
ordinary Jew saw him only occasionally, and then 
through the medium of a strange and blinding preju- 
dice. Scribe and Pharisee at Jerusalem and the con- 
course at Capernaum had all left him when the novelty 
was over. They did not know him except through a 
medium which distorted their mental and moral vision. 
In any fair jury they were ruled out by prepossessions 



How Jesus Left Us. 203 

so strong that no evidence could convince them. In- 
capacitated as witnesses before his death, they were 
as much so after his resurrection. All persons, how- 
ever, who had any claim to be considered in these 
premises were more than satisfied, after a little, of the 
actual occurrence of an event they had not anticipated, 
and for which, in all their thinking and acting, they 
were wholly unprepared. And these men saw him re- 
peatedly, at various times, in various circumstances; 
ate, drank, and talked with him. Names of places 
where these interviews occurred are set down in the 
record, the day of the week and the hour of the day, 
and what these men were doing and what was said 
by him and them. And all this in independent narra- 
tion; each man writing for his own end and with no 
fear of contradiction and no sign of collusion. No 
man twists his fact to meet another man's fact. The 
obvious fairness of the writers, as well as their abso- 
lute certainty, shows itself in their story. Any serious 
variations in the oral gospels and any serious varia- 
tions in the written, and equally any serious variations 
between the first oral gospels and those subsequently 
written, would have been discovered and exposed by 
both friend and foe; both classes alert, though for 
opposite reasons, to detect any discrepancies in any 
direction. This method gave double chance to ob- 
jectors, if there was anything to detect in these stories 
of the resurrection. Repeated at the outset with that 
noted Eastern accuracy which, in other compositions, 
has preserved for us the exact words of poet, historian, 



204 Advent and Ascension. 

and philosopher, the time came when these oral gospels 
must be put into the form of written documents for the 
authentication of the new faith. The oral gospels had 
served their purpose. They were the method of the 
hour. Teachers of philosophy in Egypt, in Athens, 
and in Rome used the "unwritten volume." The fore- 
most compositions of those centuries were first given 
to the world in this way. In the East, to-day, with 
unfailing accuracy, teachers who cannot read a word 
of the Koran teach it to their pupils. 

This method of the "unwritten volume" had certain 
advantages in that earliest century. It was the wit- 
nessing of men whose earnest belief carried with it a 
measure of forcefulness not found in carefully written 
documents. It was the best way to get the story of 
the resurrection before the minds of that generation; 
for the men knew what they said when they proclaimed 
"Jesus and the resurrection." 

So, too, it is to be observed that the new element in 
their Lord's resurrection life was noted by these wit- 
nesses. He was the same Lord, and yet in some added 
things "he showed himself alive after his passion." 
Another has said, "What was natural to him before is 
now miraculous, and what was miraculous before is 
now natural." And these men notice and record the 
change, showing themselves thereby to be very careful 
observers. The haggard look is gone. He is so fresh 
that Mary at first thinks he is the gardener. The feet 
on which, three days before, it would have been im- 
possible to stand are now so healed that he can 



How Jesus Left Us. 205 

walk to Emmaus with the disciples — though the heal- 
ing has left the scars of the wound. He comes and 
goes in a new way. His new resurrection joins exactly 
to his old ante-resurrection life, but it is a more exalted 
stage of living. 

And besides the physical evidences these men are 
afforded the more decisive moral proofs. To soul as 
well as to sense the appeal is made. Each disciple 
finds his spiritual aptitude specially addressed, and yet 
always there is the one idea of "the kingdom of God" 
in Christ's new life as in his old. The same spirit, aim, 
tone, purpose, is in the risen Christ, so that they know 
him mentally and spiritually as well as physically. He 
meets all their wants. 

5. They were anything but credulous at the outset. 
The thing which was absolutely unexpected had oc- 
curred. They not only did not lean toward the belief 
in a resurrection, they leaned the other way. The 
danger was in their unwillingness to be fair, at first, to 
the testimony. They had to see for themselves. One 
of them wanted not only the evidence of his eyes and 
his ears, but that of touch. This man thought — and 
rightly, apart from a change in the body of the Lord — 
that there would be the gaping wounds that had not 
yet time for healing. Christ ought to be, so he 
thought, if not dead, then next kin to a dead man. He 
is going to expose the too swift faith of the others 
by asking about the spear thrust, and the feet disabled 
forever by the cruel nails. He sees the healed wounds, 
and is invited to thrust his hand into the cavity still 



206 Advent and Ascension. 

left. It is enough. It is more than enough. He cries 
out, in the astonishment of his faith, "My Lord and 
my God." These men yielded their original incredulity 
only after a struggle. 

6. We must recall also the fact of the multitude of 
witnesses. At one time five hundred of those who had 
previously known him were assembled for an appointed 
interview. It was in Galilee, where he had spent most 
of his life and done most of his work. He was prob- 
ably the best-known man in that section of Palestine. 
It was arranged that these five hundred disciples 
should be able, each one of them, to say, "I have seen 
Jesus of Nazareth alive after his death." So far as we 
know, not one of them ever proved false to his testi- 
mony. Had a solitary instance of this occurred, active 
opponents would have had the counter testimony of 
such a one published to the world, and the fact would 
have not been allowed to be lost. Before the last of 
these men who saw the Lord had died many thousands 
of men had become believers, and among them were 
persons of eminence who could have examined these 
witnesses and have ascertained for themselves the truth 
about these things. 

And enemies were compelled to own the facts and 
devise ways of accounting for them. In the most 
skeptical age the world ever saw the appeal was made 
to the Gospels as books authentically recording the 
Christian beliefs, and among those beliefs not one was 
more prominent than that Jesus had risen. There was 
skepticism on all subjects in Palestine. So, too, on 



How Jesus Left Us. 20J 

the European continent, Athenian thought held all be- 
liefs about the gods in a kind of polite indifference. 
Nor was Rome credulous. Our Lord expresses, on 
one occasion, his wonder at the prevalence of a disposi- 
tion in that age toward unbelief on all subjects. This 
mood, however, was inevitably followed by a rebound 
toward faith. Men began to feel that facts were facts, 
and that they must in some way be accounted for. 
Then came the question, when Christ's resurrection 
was brought forward, "What became of that dead and 
buried body?" It was seen that all parties, each one 
from a different motive, had actually conspired to keep 
that tomb filled with the Lord's body. But it was cer- 
tain that the tomb was emptied. "How?" and then, 
"Why?" and, "By whom?" The only clear and con- 
sistent theory of that emptied tomb was that its occu- 
pant was raised from the dead. In a little time, be- 
cause there was no other way of accounting for the 
empty tomb, men began to discuss the Gospel story of 
it. In this new situation the appeal was to the recorded 
testimony of the early disciples, and friends and foes 
alike made this appeal. 

7. So, too, it is a matter of history that immediately 
this resurrection became an article of faith in all Chris- 
tian churches without exception. Within a week the 
disciples declared it, and in sixty days this was recog- 
nized by all Jerusalem as the public claim of the new 
religion. It was the most prominent thing that was 
held forth by the Christian community. It was de- 
clared in the very courts of the temple. From that 



208 Advent and Ascension. 

time forth it takes its place as the one great fact indor- 
sing and corroborating the religion of Jesus. The day 
of the week on which he rose was taken and used, and 
has been used from that time to this, as the Lord's 
day — the day of the Lord's resurrection. It was used 
for Christian worship, and it gradually superseded the 
Judaic Sabbath. It was held that, while the seventh 
day of the week was the day for the Jew as a Jew, the 
first day of the week was the proper day for the Chris- 
tian as a Christian, the moral requirement being that 
of one day in each seven. And the Jewish version of 
the moral law, after stating the principle of one seventh, 
was held to authorize the seventh day only for the Jew. 
Under apostolic guidance the observance of the first 
day began, and by the demand of Christian thought 
and feeling it has continued, and the only reason for 
this was that it celebrated the resurrection of the Lord. 

And the two ordinances given in charge to the 
churches commemorate, one the death of Jesus, the 
other his resurrection. 

8. The bearing of this fact upon New Testament 
doctrine is seen in all the Epistles. Symmetrical is 
evidential truth. The resurrection is the complement 
truth to the death. Nothing could be imagined more 
unfinished than such a career if it had closed with the 
disaster of the cross. But add to the cross the resur- 
rection and the ascension, and its aspect is changed in a 
moment; and both stand related to the fully rounded 
doctrine of Christianity. The Living One is the giver 
of a life for the soul which is so completely regenera- 



How Jesus Left Us. 209 

ting that it must carry with it the vitalizing of the 
bodies of the "dead in Christ" at "the last day." "If 
the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead 
dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead 
shall also quicken your mortal bodies." 1 Resurrection 
is regeneration expressed in physical form. The soul's 
resurrection now, and that of the body by and by, 
are both ours by the ministration of the Holy Spirit. 
But the gift of the Holy Spirit is conditioned on 
the resurrection of the Lord. So that the vitality of 
Christian doctrine, which is the chief thing about it, 
is both secured and expressed in the resurrection of 
Jesus. It is the golden clasp that binds all truth into 
one perfected system. Without it "we are of all men 
most miserable ;" 2 with it we are of all men most secure 
in our belief and most certain of our salvation. We 
are not to think of the Lord's resurrection as a mere 
appendix to our religion. It is a fundamental part of 
our Christianity. It is not to be considered simply as 
a buttress ; it is part and parcel of the building itself. 
Tear out this course of masonry which runs round all 
the walls of the structure and you would have a mass 
of unsightly ruins. We are justified in believing in 
Christ as our Lord only by the completed fact of his 
resurrection. 3 

Of the argument drawn from our Lord's resurrec- 
tion for the resurrection of all believers we may not 
now speak ; but it may be noted that many Christians, 
facing the fact that at some time they must themselves 

'Rom. viii, n. 3 i Cor. xv, 19. 3 Rom. iv, 25. 

14 



210 Advent and Ascension. 

die, have had a peculiar consolation as they have re- 
membered that the Christ not only entered upon death 
but passed through it and came up out of it un- 
harmed. He is therefore especially credited when he 
speaks on the matter of a Christian's death and resur- 
rection. He took possession of the ''keys of death and 
of Hades 1 — the keys of both entrance and exit. The 
Conqueror can unlock both doors, and so is shown to 
be one who can open the further door for his people 
— insuring short, swift passage for them. Jesus him- 
self has gone through. He lingered a little — just long 
enough to know all there is to be met. He lingered 
that we might not stay. He was '''the first to rise from 
the dead." 2 There had been approximations, there had 
been resuscitations, but there had been no resurrection 
of one who "dieth no more." Christ lingered in the 
abode of the dead so as to bless death in the thought 
of the dying. He emerged with "the keys," for all true 
believers, at his resurrection. Death is not so terrible 
since he tarried. It is sure to end in resurrection since 
he rose. Another has sung: 

"I stood within the grave's o'ershadowing vault, 
Gloomy and damp it stretched its vast domain. 

Shades were its boundary; for my strained eye sought 
For other limits for its width in vain. 

"I lit a torch at a sepulchral lamp 

Which shot a thread of light amid the gloom; 
And feebly burning 'gainst the rolling damp 

I bore it through the regions of the tomb. 

1 Rev. i, 19, a Acts xxvi, 23. 



How Jesus Left Us. 211 

"Around me stretched the slumbers of the dead, 
Whereof the silence ached upon mine ear; 

More and more noiseless did I note my tread, 
And yet its echoes chilled my heart with fear. 

"Death's various shrines — the urn, the stone, the lamp — 
Were scattered 'round, confused amid the dead. 

Symbols and types were moldering in the damp, 
Their shapes were wanting and their meaning fled. 

"Unspoken tongues, perchance of praise or woe, 
Were chronicled on tablets Time had swept; 

And deep were half their letters hid below 

The thick small dust of those they once had wept. 

"One place alone had ceased to hold its prey: 
A form had pressed it, and was there no more; 

The garments of the grave beside it lay 
Where once they wrapped Him on the rocky floor. 

"He only with returning footsteps broke 

The eternal calm with which the tomb was bound; 

Among the sleeping dead alone He woke 

And blessed, with outstretched hands, the dead around." 

But the resurrection of the Lord, great and glorious 
as it is, does not stand as the finishing act of the divine 
program. It left the Lord upon the earth. It has not 
restored him to heaven. One more act is needed to 
complete his career. Ascension is simply the perfec- 
tion of resurrection. The ascension is the crowning 
event. It ends the scene of which his rising from the 
grave was the beginning. 

There was to be expected from Luke, who makes 
such careful statements of detail concerning the virgin 
birth, an equally definite statement of the closing event 



212 Advent and Ascension. 

on Olivet. The other writers of the New Testament 
give the broad facts. Godet calls attention to the 
"innumerable declarations of the Epistles (Paul, 
Peter, Hebrews, James) which speak of the heavenly 
glory of Jesus and of his sitting at the right hand of 
God." But the details are necessarily wanting in the 
doctrinal forms of statement which abound in the 
Epistles. It is, indeed, true that the first we hear of 
the ascension comes from Christ's own prophetic words 
about the "Son of man ascending up where he was 
before." 1 And he grew to speak more frequently about 
it in his later ministry. He was going to "prepare 
mansions" and "coming again to receive" his disciples. 2 
He was not yet "ascended to the Father." 3 He was 
offering petitions for his followers that they "might 
behold his glory that he had with the Father before 
the world was." 4 

The time has come. Jesus makes especial prepara- 
tion for the event. He convenes the disciples. They 
are the prepared witnesses to the ascension. It has 
been proposed that we render the phrase "assembled 
with them" 5 by the phrase "having assembled them." 
If this demand of high scholarship is granted, the 
definiteness of the arrangement and its distinct pur- 
posefulness are even more manifest. "He led them 
out" is another of the definite touches in the narrative. 
It was no accidental meeting; no sudden appearance 

1 John vi, 62. The Greek has the participial form, which forbids any 
other than a literal ascension. 

2 John xiv, 2, 3. 9 John xx, 17, 18. 
4 Corap. John xvii, 6, with xvii, 24. ' Acts i, 4. 



How Jesus Left Us. 213 

among them such as had frequently occurred since his 
resurrection. And he "led them out until they were 
over against Bethany." 1 In the outline given in Luke 
we read, "He lifted up his hands, and blessed them; 
and while he blessed them he parted from them and 
was carried up into heaven." 2 But when, in the Acts, 
Luke completes his sketch he says "a cloud received 
him out of their sight." 3 The ascension was gradual. 
For we read that "while he blessed them, he parted from 
them," and "was taken up;" and that "they looked 
steadfastly toward heaven." 4 All this was unlike 
the sudden appearances and "vanishings out of their 
sight" which had been the peculiarities of manifesta- 
tions during those memorable "forty days." These 
men were witnesses of the facts. These facts formed 
a part of the oral gospel preached by them for years. 
And the record of these facts, promised by the Lord 
himself, 5 is given us by the most painstaking and care- 
ful investigator in the apostolic band ; by the man who 
was the close companion afterward of the apostle 
Paul. In their journeying they must have often gone 
over these facts with each other. And so the narrative 
comes to us with the indorsement of the most acute 
men in the apostolic band. And the angel witnesses 
must not be overlooked as they testify to his ascension 
"into heaven" and connect it with his "coming again." 
Thus the ascension perfects the resurrection and the 
Lord resumes his native heaven. 



1 Luke xxiv, 50, Revised Version. 3 Luke xxiv, 51. 

3 Acts 1,9. 4 Acts i, 10, 11. 6 John xvi, 12, 13. 



214 Advent and Ascension. 

This discussion has been confined to the opening and 
closing events of a most marvelous career, but it has 
been difficult at every step of the argument to avoid 
drawing the obvious conclusion as to the fitness of part 
to part and of each part to the wonderful whole. Such 
an arrival on these mortal shores and such a departure 
to the heaven whence he came carry with them, in- 
evitably, in all just thinking minds, some such inter- 
vening life as that so grandly set forth in the Epistles 
and so simply and graphically described in the Gospels. 
These parts go well together. Each demands the other. 
All are essential to the completed idea. It is one and 
the same person who is thus born and lives, dies and 
rises. Any one of these things taken alone, and in- 
credible of any ordinary man, becomes credible of Him 
in whom they all are assembled. They go together as 
the one seamless robe. They are true, and true only 
of Him who fulfills all ideals of the "Son of man" who 
was also the "Son of God." 

And the power of such a conviction, obtained as the 
result of careful study of these Christian facts, is be- 
yond all description to one who finds that he can sup- 
plement his inward persuasion with the immense rein- 
forcement of historic proof. Such a man henceforth 
knows not only what he believes but why he believes it. 

There comes also, as the result of such study the 
conviction that the future of the human race is con- 
nected with this Christ. He may be rejected by those 
who live along the course of the immediate centuries, 
as by many in the centuries of the past ; but these re- 



How Jesus Left Us. 215 

jections, as in the parable of the supper, are so managed 
that more come to the gospel feast in the end. "My 
house shall be filled." In the coming eras Christ will 
be accepted by the vast mass of the human race. The 
culminating centuries will do him honor. He is to 
reign King of kings and Lord of lords. The ascended 
Christ completes the idea of the "ascent of man." He 
was "the Son of man ;" the ideal man not only in char- 
acter, but in the realization of humanity. In him the 
"lost race" becomes the "found race ;" and with him, as 
the ascended Christ, will be gathered that "great mul- 
titude," which no man can number, "of all nations, and 
kindreds, and people, and tongues," who stand "before 
the throne, and before the Lamb." 



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